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ELIZABETH 
MCCRACKEN 




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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 



COMPANIONS AND FRIENDS 



Page 18. 



THE 
AMERICAN CHILD 

BY 

ELIZABETH McCRACKEN 

With Illustrations from photographs 
by Alice Austin 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1913 



^^.;' 



COPYRIGHT, I912, BY THE OUTLOOK COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT, I913, BY ELIZABETH MCCRACKEN 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published March IQ13 



A-hT 



iC!,A343517 



TO 
MY FATHER AND MOTHER 



PREFACE 

The purpose of this preface is that of 
every preface — to say " thank you " to the 
persons who have helped in the making of 
the book. 

I would render thanks first of all to the 
Editors of the "Outlook" for permission to 
reprint the chapters of the book which 
appeared as articles in the monthly magazine 
numbers of their publication. 

I return thanks also to Miss Rosamond 
F. Rothery, Miss Sara Cone Bryant, Miss 
Agnes F. Perkins, and Mr. Ferris Greens- 
let. Without the help and encouragement 
of all of these, the book never would have 
been written. 

Finally, I wish to say an additional word 
of thanks to my physician. Dr. John E. Still- 
well. Had it not been for his consummate 
skill and untiring care after an accident, 
which, four years ago, made me a year-long 
hospital patient, I should never have lived 
to write anything. E. McC. 

Cambridge, January, 191 3 



CONTENTS 

Introduction xiii 

I. The Child at Home . . i 

II. The Child at Play . . .30 

III. The Country Child • . 60 

IV. The Child in School . . .90 
V. The Child in the Library . 119 

VI. The Child in Church . . .148 

Conclusion . . . . 178 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Companions and friends . Frontispiece 

Three small girls . . . . 8 *^ 

The boy of the house . . • . i8 "^ 
" Did you play it this way ? " . . 42 
The dear delights of playing alone . 54 ^ 
" The children — they are such dears " 66 *^ 
a small country boy . . . . 8o '^ 
Arrayed in spotless white . . 86 

They paint pictures as a regular part 

OF their school routine . . <)%^ 

They do so many things ! . . . 104^ 
They have so many things! . . 116^ 
The story hour in the children's room 126^ 
The children's edition . . . 140 k^ 

In the infant class . . . . 1501/^ 

" Do YOU LIKE my new HYMN?" . . l66*^ 

Children go to church . . . 172 



INTRODUCTION 

One day several years ago, when Mr. 
Lowes Dickinson's statement that he had 
found no conversation and — worse still — 
no conversationalists in America was fresh 
in our outraged minds, I happened to meet 
an English woman who had spent approx- 
imately the same amount of time in our coun- 
try as had Mr. Lowes Dickinson. " What 
has been your experience ? " I anxiously asked 
her. " Is it true that we only ' talk * ? Can it 
really be that we never ' converse ' ? " 

" Dear me, no ! " she exclaimed with grati- 
fying fervor. " You are the most delightful 
conversationalists in the world, on your own 
subject — " 

" Our own subject ? " I echoed. 

" Certainly," she returned ; " your own 
subject, the national subject, — the child, the 
American child. It is possible to ' converse ' 
with any American on that subject ; every 
one of you has something to say on it; 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

and every one of you will listen eagerly to 
what any other person says on it. You modify 
the opinions of your hearers by what you say ; 
and you actually allow your own opinions to 
be modified by what you hear said. If that 
is conversation, without a doubt you have it 
in America, and have it in as perfect a state 
as conversation ever was had anywhere. But 
you have it only on that subject. I wonder 
why," she went on, half-musingly, before I 
could make an attempt to persuade her to 
qualify her rather sweeping assertion. "It 
may be because you do so much for children, 
in America. They are always on your mind ; 
they are hardly ever out of your sight. You 
are forever either doing something for them, 
or planning to do something for them. No 
wonder the child is your one subject of con- 
versation. You do so i;^ry much for children 
in America," she repeated. 

Few of us will agree with the English 
woman that the child, the American child, 
is the only subject upon which we converse. 
Certainly, though, it is a favorite subject ; it 
may even not inaptly be called our national 



INTRODUCTION xv 

subject. Whatever our various views concern- 
ing this may chance to be, however, it is 
likely that we are all in entire agreement with 
regard to the other matter touched upon by 
the English woman, — the pervasiveness of 
American children. Is it not true that we 
keep them continually in mind ; that we sel- 
dom let them go quite out of sight ; that we 
are always doing, or planning to do, some- 
thing for them ? What is it that we would 
do ? And why is it that we try so unceasingly 
to do it ? * 

It seems to me that we desire with a great 
desire to make the boys and girls do; that 
all of the " very much " that we do for them 
is done in order to teach them just that — 
to do. It is a large and many-sided and vari- 
colored desire, and to follow its leadings is 
an arduous labor ; but is there one of us who 
knows a child well who has not this desire, 
and who does not cheerfully perform that 
labor ? Having decided in so far as we are 
able what were good to do, we try, not only 
to do it ourselves, in our grown-up way, but 
so to train the children that they, too, may 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

do it, in their childish way. The various 
means that we find most helpful to the end of 
our own doing we secure for the children, — 
adapting them, simplifying them, and even 
re-shaping them, that the boys and girls may 
use them to the full. 

There is, of course, a certain impersonal 
quality in a great deal of what we, in America, 
do for children. It is not based so much on 
friendship for an individual child as on a 
sense of responsibility for the well-being of 
all childhood, especially all childhood in our 
own country. But most of what we do, after 
all, we do for the boys and girls whom we 
know and love ; and we do it because they 
are our friends, and we wish them to share 
in the good things of our lives, — our work 
and our play. To what amazing lengths we 
sometimes go in this " doing for " the chil- 
dren of our circles ! 

One Saturday afternoon, only a few weeks 
ago, I saw at the annual exhibit of the State 
Board of Health, a man, one of my neigh- 
bors, with his little eight-year old boy. The 
exhibit consisted of the customary display 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

of charts and photographs, showing the na- 
ture of the year's work in relation to the milk 
supply, the water supply, the housing of the 
poor, and the prevention of contagious dis- 
eases. My neighbor is not a specialist in any 
one of these matters ; his knowledge is merely 
that of an average good citizen. He went 
from one subject to the other, studying them. 
His boy followed close beside him, looking 
where his father looked, — if with a lesser 
interest at the charts, with as great an intent- 
ness at the photographs. As they made their 
way about the room given over to the ex- 
hibit, they talked, the boy asking questions, 
the father endeavoring to answer them. 

The small boy caught sight of me as I stood 
before one of the charts relating to the pre- 
vention of contagious diseases, and ran across 
the room to me. " What 3.reyou looking at ? " 
he said. " That ! It shows how many people 
were vaccinated, does n't it ? Come over here 
and see the pictures of the calves the doctors 
get the stuff to vaccinate with from ! " 

" Is n*t this an odd place for a little boy 
on a Saturday afternoon ? " I remarked to 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

my neighbor, a little later, when the boy had 
roamed to the other side of the room, out of 
hearing. 

" Not at all ! " asserted the child's father. 
" He was inquiring the other day why he had 
been vaccinated, why all the children at school 
had been vaccinated. Just before that, he had 
asked where the water in the tap came from. 
This is just the place for him right now! 
It is n't odd at all for him to be here on a 
Saturday afternoon. It is much odder for 
me,' he continued with a smile. " I 'd natur- 
ally be playing golf ! But when children begin 
to ask questions, one has to do something 
about answering them ; and coming here 
seemed to be the best way of answering these 
newest questions of my boy's. I want him to 
learn about the connection of the state with 
these things ; so he will be ready to do his part 
in them, when he gets to the 'voting age.' " 

" But can he understand, yet ? " I ven- 
tured. 

" More than if he had n't seen all this, 
and heard about what it means," my neigh- 
bor replied. 



INTRODUCTION xix 

It is not unnatural, when a child asks 
questions so great and so far-reaching as 
those my neighbor's small boy had put to 
him, that we should " do something about 
answering them," — something as vivid as 
may be within our power. But, even when 
the queries are of a minor character, we still 
bestir ourselves until they are adequately 
answered. 

" Mamma," I heard a little girl inquire 
recently, as she fingered a scrap of pink 
gingham of which her mother was making 
" rompers " for the baby of the family, " why 
are the threads of this cloth pink when you 
unravel it oneway, and white when you un- 
ravel it the other ? " 

The mother was busy ; but she laid aside 
her sewing and explained to the child about 
the warp and the woof in weaving. 

" I don't quite see why that makes the 
threads pink one way and white the other," 
the little girl said, perplexedly, when the ex- 
planation was finished. 

" When you go to kindergarten, you will," 
I suggested. 



XX INTRODUCTION 

" But I want to know now," the child 
demurred. 

The next day I got for the little girl at a 
"kindergarten supply " establishment a box 
of the paper woofs and warps, so well-known 
to kindergarten pupils. Not more than three 
or four days elapsed before I took them to 
the child; but I found that her busy mother 
had already provided her with some ; pink 
and white, moreover, among other colors ; 
and had taught the little girl how to weave 
with them. 

" She understands, noWy why the threads 
of pink gingham are pink one way and white 
the other ! " the mother observed. 

" Why did you go to such trouble to teach 
her?" I asked with some curiosity. 

" Well," the mother returned, " she will 
have to buy gingham some time. She will be 
a grown-up ^ woman who spends ' some day ; 
and she will do the spending the better for 
knowing just what she is buying, — what it 
is made of, and how it is made ! " 

It is no new thing for fathers and mothers 
to think more of the future than of the 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

present in their dealings with their boys and 
girls. Parents of all times and in all coun- 
tries have done this. It seems to me, how- 
ever, that American fathers and mothers of 
to-day, unlike those of any other era or na- 
tion, think, in training their children, of 
what one might designate as a most minutely 
detailed future. The mother of whom I have 
been telling wished to teach her little girl not 
only how to buy, but how to buy gingham ; 
and the father desired his small boy to learn 
not alone that his state had a board of health, 
but that he might hope to become a mem- 
ber of a particular department of it. 

We occasionally hear elderly persons ex- 
claim that children of the present day are 
taught a great many things that did not enter 
into the education of their grandparents, or 
even of their parents. But, on investigation, 
we scarcely find that this is the case. What we 
discover is that the children of to-day are 
taught, not new lessons, but the old lessons 
by a new method. Sewing, for example : little 
girls no longer make samplers, working on 
them the letters of the alphabet in "cross- 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

stitch " ; they learn to do cross-stitch letters, 
only they learn not by working the entire 
alphabet on a square of linen merely avail- 
able to "learn on," but by working the in- 
itials of a mother or an aunt on a " guest 
towel,'* which later serves as a Christmas or 
a birthday gift of the most satisfactory kind ! 
Perhaps one of the best things we do for the 
little girls of our families is to teach them to 
take their first stitches to some definite end. 
Certainly we do it with as conscientious a care 
as ever watched over the stitches of the little 
girls of old as they made the faded samplers 
we cherish so affectionately. 

The brothers of these little girls learned 
carpentry, when they were old enough to 
handle tools with safety. The boys of to-day 
also learn it; some of them begin long before 
they can handle any tools with safety, and 
when they can handle no tool at all except 
a hammer. As soon as they wish to drive 
nails, they are allowed to drive them, and 
taught to drive them to some purpose. I 
happened not a great while ago to pass the 
day at the summer camp of a friend of mine 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

who is the mother of a small boy, aged five. 
My friend's husband was constructing a 
rustic bench. 

The little boy watched for a time ; then, 
" Daddy, / want to put in nails," he said. 

"All right," replied his father; "you 
may. Just wait a minute and I'll let you 
have the hammer and the nails. Your mother 
wants some nails in the kitchen to hang the 
tin things on. If she will show you where she 
wants them, I '11 show you how to put them 
in." 

This was done, with much gayety on the 
part of us all. When the small boy, tutored 
by his father, had driven in all the required 
nails, he lifted a triumphant face to his mo- 
ther. " There they are ! " he exclaimed. 
"Now let's hang the tin things on them, 
and see how they look ! " 

The boy's father did not finish the rustic 
bench that day. When a neighboring camper, 
who stopped in to call toward the end of 
the afternoon, expressed surprise at his ap- 
parent dilatoriness, and asked for an explana- 
tion, the father simply said, " I did mean to 



xxiv INTRODUCTION 

finish it to-day, but I had to do something 
for my boy instead." 

One of the things we grown-ups do for 
children that has been rather severely criti- 
cized is the lavishing upon them of toys, — 
intricate and costly toys. " What, as a child, 
I used to pretend the toys I had, were, the 
toys my children have now, are ! ** an ac- 
quaintance of mine was saying to me re- 
cently. " For instance," she went on, " I 
had a box with a hole in one end of it ; I 
used to pretend that it was a camera, and 
pretend to take pictures with it ! I cannot 
imagine my children doing that ! They have 
real cameras and take real pictures." 

The camera would seem to be typical of 
the toys we give to the children of to-day; 
they can do something with it, — some- 
thing real. 

The dearest treasure of my childhood was 
a tiny gold locket, shaped, and even engraved, 
like a watch. Not long ago I was showing 
it to a little girl who lives in New York. 
" I used to pretend it was a watch," I said ; 
" I used to pretend telling the time by it." 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

She gazed at it with interested eyes. " It 
is very nice/' she observed politely ; " but 
would n't you have liked to have a real 
watch ? / have one ; and I really tell the 
time by it." 

"But you cannot pretend with it!" I 
found myself saying. 

" Oh, yes, I can," the little girl exclaimed 
in surprise ; " and I do ! I hang it on the 
cupola of my dolls' house and pretend that 
it is the clock in the MetropoUtan Tower ! " 

The alarmists warn us that what we do 
for the children in the direction of costly 
and complicated toys may, even while help- 
ing them do something for themselves, mar 
their priceless simplicity. Need we fear this ? 
Is it not likely that the " real " watches 
which we give them that they may " really " 
tell time, will be used, also, for more than 
one of the other simple purposes of child- 
hood ? 

The English woman said that we Amer- 
icans did so much, so very much, for the 
children of our nation. There have been 
other foreigners who asserted that we did too 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

much. Indubitably, we do a great deal. But, 
since we do it all that the children may 
learn to do, and, through doing, to be, can 
we ever possibly do too much? "It is pos- 
sible to converse with any American on the 
American child," the English woman said. 
Certainly every American has something to 
say on that subject, because every American 
is trying to do something for some American 
child, or group of children, to do much, 
very much. 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 



THE CHILD AT HOME 

In one of the letters of Alice, Grand 
Duchess of Hesse, to her mother, Queen 
Victoria, she writes : " I try to give my 
children in their home what I had in my 
childhood's home. As well as I am able, I 
copy what you did." 

There is something essentially British in 
this point of view. The English mother, 
whatever her rank, tries to give her children 
in their home what she had in her childhood's 
home ; as well as she is able, she copies what 
her mother did. The conditions of her life 
may be entirely different from those of her 
mother, her children may be unlike herself 
in disposition ; yet she still holds to tradition 
in regard to their upbringing ; she tries to 
I 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

make their home a reproduction of her 
mother's home. 

The American mother, whatever her sta- 
tion, does the exact opposite — she attempts 
to bestow upon her children what she did 
not possess ; and she makes an effort to imi- 
tate as little as possible what her mother did. 
She desires her children to have that which 
she did not have, and for which she longed; 
or that which she now thinks so much bet- 
ter a possession than anything she did have. 
Her ambition is to train her children, not 
after her mother's way, but in accordance 
with "the most approved modern method." 
This method is apt, on analysis, to turn out 
to be merely the reverse side of her mother's 
procedure. 

I have an acquaintance, the mother of a 
plump, jolly little tomboy of a girl ; which 
child my acquaintance dresses in dainty em- 
broideries and laces, delicately colored rib- 
bons, velvet cloaks, and feathered hats. 
These garments are not "becoming" to the 
little girl, and they are a distinct hindrance 
to her hoydenish activities. They are not 

2 



THE CHILD AT HOME 

what she ought to have, and, moreover, they 
are not what she wants. 

" I wish I had a middy blouse, and some 
bloomers, and an aviation cap, and a sweater, 
and a Peter Thompson coat ! '* I heard her 
say recently to her mother: "the other 
children have them." 

" Children are never satisfied ! " her mother 
exclaimed to me later, when we were alone. 
" I spend so much time and money seeing 
that she has nice clothes ; and you hear what 
she thinks of them ! " 

" But, for ordinary wear, for play, would n't 
the things she wants be more comfortable? " 
I ventured. " You dress her so beautifully ! " 
I added. 

"Well," said my acquaintance in a grati- 
fied tone, " I am glad you think so. /had no 
very pretty clothes when I was a child ; and 
I always longed for them. My mother did n*t 
believe in finery for children ; and she dressed 
us very plainly indeed. I want my little girl 
to look as I used to wish / might look ! " 

" But she does n't care how she looks — " 
I began. 

3 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

" I know," the child's mother sighed. " I 
can see how her little girls will be dressed ! " 

Can we not all see just that ? And doubt- 
less the little girls of this beruffled, befurbe- 
lowed tomboy — dressed in middy blouses, 
and bloomers, and aviation caps, and sweat- 
ers, and Peter Thompson coats, or their 
future equivalents — will wish they had gar- 
ments of a totally different kind ; and she 
will be exclaiming, " Children are never 
satisfied ! " 

If this principle on the part of mothers 
in America in providing for their children 
were confined to such superficialities as their 
clothing, no appreciable harm — or good — 
would come of it. But such is not the case; 
it extends to the uttermost parts of the 
child's home life. 

Only the other day I happened to call 
upon a friend of mine during the hour set 
aside for her little girFs piano lesson. The 
child was tearfully and rebelliously playing 
a "piece." Her teacher, a musician of un- 
usual ability, guided her stumbling fingers 
with conscientious patience and care, A child 
4 



THE CHILD AT HOME 

of the least musical talent would surely have 
responded in some measure to such excel- 
lent instruction. My friend's little girl did 
not. When the lesson was finished, she 
slipped from the piano stool with a sigh of 
intense relief 

She started to run out of doors ; but her 
mother detained her. " You may go to your 
room for an hour," she said, gently but 
gravely, " and stay there all alone. That will 
help you to remember to try harder to- 
morrow to have a good music lesson.*' And 
the child, more tearful, more rebellious than 
before, crept away to her room. 

"When I was her age I didn't like the 
work involved in taking music lessons any 
better than she does," my friend said. " So 
my mother did n't insist upon my taking 
them. I have regretted it all my life. I love 
music ; I always loved it — I loved it even 
when I hated practising and music lessons. 
I wish my mother had made me keep at it, 
no matter how much I objected ! Well, I 
shall do it with my daughter; she'll thank 
me for it some day." 

5 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

I am not so sure that her daughter will. 
Her music-teacher agrees with me. "The 
child has no talent whatever," she told me. 
" It is a waste of time for her to take piano 
lessons. Her mother now — j/^^ has a real 
gift for it ! I often wish she would take the 
lessons ! " 

American mothers are no more prone to 
give their children what they themselves did 
not have than are American fathers. The 
man who is most eager that his son should 
have a college education is not the man who 
has two or three academic degrees, but the 
man who never went to college at all. The 
father whose boys are allowed to be irregular 
in their church attendance is the father who, 
as a boy, was compelled to go to church, 
rain or shine, twice on every Sunday. 

In the more intimate life of the family the 
same principle rules. The parents try to give 
to the children ideals that were not given to 
them ; they attempt to inculcate in the chil- 
dren habits that were not inculcated in them- 
selves. 
^ I know a family in which are three small 

6 



THE CHILD AT HOME 

girls, between whom there is very httle difTer- 
ence in age. These children all enjoy com- 
ing to take tea with me. For convenience, I 
should naturally invite them all on the same 
afternoon. 

Both their father and mother, however, 
have requested me not to do this. " Do ask 
them one at a time on different days," they 
said. 

" Of course I will," I assented. " But — 
why ? " I could not forbear questioning. 

"When I was a child," the mother of 
the three little girls explained, " I was never 
allowed to accept an invitation unless my 
younger sister was invited, too. I was fond 
of my sister; but I used to long to go some- 
where sometime by myself! My husband 
had the same experience — his brother al- 
ways had to be invited when he was, or he 
could n't go. Our children shall not be so 
circumscribed ! " 

There is not much danger for them, cer- 
tainly, in that direction. Yet I rather think 
they would enjoy doing more things to- 
gether. One day, not a great while ago, I 

7 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

chanced to meet all three of them near a tea- 
room. I asked them — perforce all of them 
— to go in with me and partake of ice cream. 
As we sat around the table, the oldest of the 
three glanced at the other two with a friendly- 
smile. " It is nice — all of us having ice 
cream with you at the same time," she re- 
marked, and her younger sisters enthusiast- 
ically agreed. 

To be sure, they are nearer the same age 
and they are more alike in their tastes than 
their mother and her sister, or their father and 
his brother. Perhaps their parents needed to 
take their pleasures singly ; they seem able 
quite happily to take theirs in company. 

I have another friend, who was brought 
up in a household in which, as she says, "in- 
dividuality " was the keynote. In her own 
home the keynote is " the family." She 
encourages her children to "do things to- 
gether." Furthermore, she and her husband 
habitually participate in their children's oc- 
cupations to a greater degree than any other 
parents I have ever seen. 

Their friends usually entertain these chil- 
8 



THE CHILD AT HOME 

dren " as a family " ; but not long ago, hap- 
pening to have only two tickets to a concert, 
I asked one, and just one, of the little girls 
of this household to attend it with me. She 
accepted eagerly. During an intermission 
she looked up at me and said, confidingly, 
" It is nice sometimes to do things not ' as 
a family,' but just as one's self!" 

Then, for the first time, it occurred to me 
that she was the "odd one" of her family. 
All its pleasures, all its interests, were not 
equally hers. She needed sometimes to do 
things as herself. 

In matters of discipline, too, we find the 
same theory at work. Parents who were se- 
verely punished as children do not punish 
their children at all ; and the most austere of 
parents are those who, when children, were 
" spoiled." Almost regardless of the natures 
of their children, parents deal with them, so 
far as discipline is concerned, as they them- 
selves were not dealt with. 

This implies no lack of love, no lack of 
respect, for the older generation. On the 
contrary, it is the sign and symbol of a love, 

9 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

a respect, so great as to permit of diver- 
gences of opinion and procedure, in spite of 
differences of age. 

" I am not going to bring up the baby in 
the way I was brought up, mamma, dar- 
ling," I once heard a mother of a month- 
old baby (her first child) say to the baby's 
grandmother. 

"Aren't you, dear?" replied the older 
lady, with a smile. " Why not ? " 

" Oh," returned the daughter, " I want 
her to be better than I am. I think if you 'd 
brought me up conversely from the way you 
did, I 'd have been a much more worth-while 
person." 

She spoke very solemnly, but her mother 
only laughed, and then fondly kissed her 
daughter and her granddaughter. " That is 
what I said to my mother when you were a 
month old ! " she said whimsically. 

Children in American homes, it might be 
supposed, would be affected by such diver- 
sity in the theories of their parents and their 
grandparents concerning their rearing. They 
might naturally be expected to "take sides" 

10 



THE CHILD AT HOME 

with the one or the other ; or, at any rate, 
to be puzzled or disturbed by the principle 
of" contrariwiseness " governing their lives. 
From their earliest years they are aware of 
it. The small girl very soon learns that the 
real reason why she finds a gold bracelet in 
her Christmas stocking is that mother " al- 
ways wanted one, but grandma did not ap- 
prove of jewelry for children." The little 
boy quickly discovers that his dog sleeps on 
the foot of his bed mainly because " father's 
dog was never allowed even to come into the 
house. Grandpa was a doctor, and thought 
dogs were not clean." 

This knowledge, so soon acquired, would 
seem to be a menace to family unity ; but it 
is not — even in homes in which the three 
generations are living together. The chil- 
dren know what their grandparents wished 
for their parents ; they know what their pa- 
rents wish for them ; but, most of all and 
best of all, they know what they wish for 
themselves. It is not what their parents had, 
nor what their parents try to give them ; it 
is " what other children have." 
II 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

Perhaps all children are conventional ; cer- 
tainly American children are. They wish to 
have what the other children of their ac- 
quaintance have, they wish to do what those 
other children do. It is not because mother 
wanted a bracelet, and never had it, that the 
little girl would have a bracelet ; it is be- 
cause " the other girls have bracelets." Not 
on account of the rules that forbade father's 
dog the house is the small boy happy in 
the nightly companionship of his dog; he 
takes the dog to bed with him for the rea- 
son that " the other boys* dogs sleep with 
them." 

Even unto honors, if they must carry 
them alone, children in America would rather 
not be born. A little girl who lives in my 
neighborhood came home from school in 
tears one day not long ago. Her father is a 
celebrated writer. The school-teacher, hap- 
pening to select one of his stories to read 
aloud to the class, mentioned the fact that 
the author of the story was the father of my 
small friend. 

" But why are you crying about it, sweet- 

12 



THE CHILD AT HOME 

heart?" her father asked. " Do you think 
it 's such a bad story ? " 

" Oh, no," the little girl answered ; " it is 
a good enough story. But none of the other 
children's fathers write stories! Why do yoUy 
daddy ? It 's so peculiar ! " 

It may be that all children, whatever their 
nationalities, are like this little girl. We, in 
America, have a fuller opportunity to be- 
come intimately acquainted with the minds of 
children than have the people of any other 
nation of the earth. For more completely 
than any other people do American fathers 
and mothers make friends and companions 
of their children, asking from them, first, 
love ; then, trust ; and, last of all, the defer- 
ence due them as " elders." Any child may 
feel as did my small neighbor about a " pe- 
culiar " father ; only a child who had been 
his comrade as well as his child would so 
freely have voiced her feeling. 

We all remember the little boy in Steven- 
son's poem, " My Treasures," whose dear- 
est treasure, a chisel, was dearest because 
" very few children possess such a thing." 

13 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

Had he been an American child, that chisel 
would not have been a "treasure" at all, 
unless all of the children possessed such a 
thing. 

Not only do the children of our Nation 
want what the other children of their circle 
have when they can use it; they want it even 
when they cannot use it. I have a little girl 
friend who, owing to an accident in her in- 
fancy, is slightly lame. Fortunately, she is 
not obliged to depend upon crutches ; but 
she cannot run about, and she walks with a 
pathetically halting step. 

One autumn this child came to her mo- 
ther and said : " Mamma, I *d like to go to 
dancing-school." 

"But, my dearest, I'm afraid — I don't 
believe — you could learn to dance — very 
well," her mother faltered. 

"Oh, mamma, / couldn't learn to dance 
at all! " the little girl exclaimed, as if sur- 
prised that her mother did not fully realize 
this fact. 

*'Then, dearest, why do you want to go to 
dancing-school?" her mother asked gently. 
14 



THE CHILD AT HOME 

" The other girls in my class at school are 
all going," the child said. 

Her mother was silent; and the little girl 
came closer and lifted pleading eyes to her 
face. ^^ Please let me go ! " she begged. "The 
others are all going," she repeated. 

" I could not bear to refuse her," the mo- 
ther wrote to me later. " I let her go. I 
feared that it would only make her feel her 
lameness the more keenly and be a source 
of distress to her. But it is n't ; she enjoys 
it. She cannot even try to learn to dance; 
but she takes pleasure in being present and 
watching the others, to say nothing of wear- 
ing a 'dancing-school dress,* as they do. 
This morning she said to her father: 'I 
can't dance, papa; but I can talk about it. I 
learn how at dancing-school. Oh, I love 
dancing-school ! ' " 

Her particular accomplishment maybe of 
minute value in itself; but is not her content 
in it a priceless good ? If she can continue 
to enjoy learning only to talk about the plea- 
sures her lameness will not permit her other- 
wise to share, her dancing-school lessons 

15 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

will have taught her better things than they 
taught " the other children," who could 
dance. 

That mother was her little girl's confi- 
dential friend as well as her mother. The 
child, quite unreservedly, told her what she 
wanted and why she wanted it. It was no 
weak indulgence of a child's whim, but a 
genuine respect for another person's rights 
as an individual — even though that individ- 
ual was merely a little child — that led that 
mother to allow her daughter to have what 
she wanted. May not some subtle sense of 
this have been the basis of the child's hap- 
piness in the fulfillment of her desire ? She 
wanted to go to dancing-school because the 
other children were going ; but may she not 
have liked going because she felt that her 
mother understood and sympathized with 
her desire to go? 

A Frenchwoman to whom I once said 
that American parents treat their children in 
many ways as though they were their con- 
temporaries remarked, " But does that not 
make the children old before their time ? " 
i6 



THE CHILD AT HOxME 

So far from this, it seems, on the contrary, 
to keep the parents young after their time. 
It has been truly said that we have in Amer- 
ica fewer and fewer grandmothers who are 
"sweet old ladies," and more and more who 
are "charming elderly women." We hear 
less and less about the " older " and the 
"younger" generations; increasingly we 
merge two, and even three, generations into 
one. 

Only yesterday, calling upon a new ac- 
quaintance, I heard the four-year-old boy of 
the house, mentioning his father, refer to 
him as "Henry." 

His grandmother smiled, and his mother 
said, casually: "When you speak ^father, 
dear, it would be better to say, *my father,' 
so people will be sure to know whom you 
mean. You may have noticed that grandma 
always says, ' my son,' and I always say 
*my husband,' when we speak of him." 

" Does he call his father by his Christian 
name?" I could not resist questioning, when 
the little boy had left the room. 

" Sometimes," replied the child's mother. 

17 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

" He hears so many persons do it, he can't 
see why he should n't. And there really is 
no reason. Soon enough he will find out 
that it is n*t customary and stop doing it." 

This is a far cry from the days when chil- 
dren were taught to address their parents as 
"honored sir" and "respected madam." 
But, it seems to me, the parents are as much 
honored and respected now as then; and — 
more important still — both they and the 
children are, if not dearer, yet nearer one 
another. 

In small as well as in large matters they 
slip into their parents* places — neither 
encouraged nor discouraged, but simply 
accepted. Companions and friends, they 
behave as such, and are treated in a com- 
panionable and friendly manner. 

The other afternoon I dropped in at tea- 
time for a glimpse of an old friend. 

Her little girl came into the room in the 
wake of the tea-tray. " Let me pour the tea," 
she said, eagerly. 

" Very well," her mother acquiesced. " Be 
careful not to fill the cups too full, so that 
i8 




THE BOY OF THE HOUSE 



THE CHILD AT HOME 

they overflow into the saucers ; and do not 
forget that the tea is hot,'' she supplemented. 

The little girl had never poured the tea 
before, but-her mother neither watched her 
nor gave her any further directions. The 
child devoted herself to her pleasant task. 
With entire ease and unconsciousness she 
filled the cups, and made the usual inquiries 
as to "one lump, or two?" and "cream or 
lemon?" 

"Is n*t she rather young to pour the tea? " 
I suggested, when we were alone. 

" I don't see why," my friend said. 
"There is n't any ' age limit ' about pouring 
tea. She does it for her dolls in the nursery ; 
she might just as well do it for us here. Of 
course it is hot ; but she can be careful." 

There are few things in regard to the 
doing or the saying or the thinking of 
which American parents apprehend any " age 
limit." Their children are not " tender ju- 
veniles." They do not have a detached life 
of their own which the parents " share," 
nor do the parents have a detached life of 
their own which the children " share." There 
19 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

Is the common life of the home, to which all, 
parents and children, and often grandparents 
too, contribute, and in which they all 
" share." 

This is the secret of that genuine satis- 
faction that so many of us grown-ups in 
America find in the society of children, 
whether they are members of our own fam- 
ilies or are the children of our friends and 
neighbors. 

A short time ago I had occasion to invite 
to Sunday dinner a little boy friend of mine 
who is nine years old. Lest he might feel his 
youth in a household which no longer con- 
tains any nine-year-olds, I invited to "meet 
him *' two other boys, playmates of his, of 
about the same age. There chanced also to 
be present a friend, a professor in a woman's 
college, into whose daily life very seldom 
strays a boy, especially one nine years old. 

" What interesting things have you been 
doing lately ? ** she observed to the boy be- 
side her in the pause which followed our 
settling of ourselves at the table. 

"I have been seeing 'The Blue Bird,'" 

20 



THE CHILD AT HOME 

he at once answered. " Havejoa seen it ? " 
he next asked. 

No sooner had she replied than he turned 
to me. "I suppose, of course, jy(?a 'i;^ seen 
it," he said. 

"Not yet," I told him; "but I have 
read it — " 

" Oh, so have I ! " exclaimed one of the 
other boys ; " and I 've seen it, too. There 
is one act in the play that is n't in the book 
— *The Land of Happiness' it is. My 
mother says she does n't think Mr. Maeter- 
linck could have written it ; it is so differ- 
ent from the rest of the play." 

Those present, old and young, who had 
seen "The Blue Bird" debated this possi- 
bility at some length. 

Then the boy who had introduced it said 
to me : " I wonder, when you see it, whether 
you 'II think Mr. Maeterlinck wrote ' The 
Land of Happiness ' act, or not." 

"I haven't seen ^The Blue Bird,'" the 
third boy remarked, " but I 've seen the 
Coronation pictures." Whereupon we fell 
to discussing moving-picture shows. 

21 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

During the progress of that dinner we con- 
sidered many other subjects, lighting upon 
them casually; touching upon them lightly; 
and — most significant of all — discoursing 
upon them as familiars and equals. None 
of us who were grown-up "talked down " to 
the boyS) and certainly none of the boys 
" talked up " to us. Each one of them at 
home was a "dear partner" of every other 
member of the family, younger and older, 
larger and smaller. Inevitably, each one 
when away from home became quite spon- 
taneously an equal shareholder in whatever 
was to be possessed at all. 

A day or two after the Sunday of that din- 
ner I met one of my boy guests on the 
street. " I Ve seen ' The Blue Bird,' " I said 
to him; "and I'm inclined to think that, 
if Mr. Maeterlinck did write the act * The 
Land of Happiness,' he wrote it long after 
he had written the rest of the play. I think 
perhaps that is why it is so different from 
the other acts." 

"Why, I never thought of that ! "the boy 
cried, with absolute unaiFectedness. He ap- 

22 



THE CHILD AT HOME 

peared to consider it for a moment, and then 
he said : " I '11 tell my mother ; she *11 be in- 
terested." 

Foreign visitors of distinction not infre- 
quently have accused American children of 
being "pert," or "lacking in reverence," or 
" sophisticated." Those of us who are bet- 
ter acquainted with the children of our own 
Nation cannot concur in any of these accu- 
sations. Unhappily, there are children in 
America, as there are children in every land, 
who are pert, and lacking in reverence, and 
sophisticated ; but they are in the small mi- 
nority, and they are not the children to whom 
foreigners refer when they make their sweep- 
ing arraignments. 

The most gently reared, the most care- 
fully nurtured, of our children are those usu- 
ally seen by distinguished foreign visitors ; 
for such foreigners are apt to be guests of 
the families to which these children belong. 
The spirit of frank r^w^r^^m^ displayed by 
the children they mistake for " pertness " ; 
the trustful freedom of their attitude toward 
their elders they interpret as "lack of rev- 
23 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

erence " ; and their eager interest in subjects 
ostensibly beyond their years they misread 
as "sophistication." 

It must be admitted that American small 
boys have not the quaint courtliness of 
French small boys ; that American little girls 
are without the pretty shyness of English 
little girls. We are compelled to grant that 
in America between the nursery and the 
drawing-room there is no great gulf fixed. 
This condition of things has its real disad- 
vantages and trials ; but has it not also its 
ideal advantages and blessings ? Cooperative 
living together, in spite of individual differ- 
ences, is one of these advantages ; tender 
intimacy between persons of varying ages is 
one of these blessings. 

A German woman on her first visit to 
America said to me, as we talked about chil- 
dren, that, with our National habit of treat- 
ing them as what we Americans call " chums," 
she wondered how parents kept any author- 
ity over them, and especially maintained any 
government of them, 3.nd for them, without 
letting it lapse into a government ky them. 

24 



THE CHILD AT HOME 

" I should think that the commandment 
'Children, obey your parents' might be in 
danger of being overlooked or thrust aside/* 
she said, " in a country in which children 
and parents are 'chums/ as Americans say." 

That ancient commandment would seem 
to be too toweringly large to be overlooked, 
too firmly embedded in the world to be 
thrust aside. It is a very Rock of Gibraltar 
of a commandment. 

American parents do not relinquish their 
authority over their children. As for gov- 
ernment — like other wise parents, they aim 
to help it to develop, as soon as it properly 
can, from a government of and for their 
children into a government by them. Self- 
government is the lesson of lessons they most 
earnestly desire to teach their children. 

Methods of teaching it differ. Indeed, as 
to methods of teaching their children any- 
thing, American fathers and mothers have 
no fixed standard, no homogeneous ideal. 
More likely than not they follow in this im- 
portant matter their custom in matters of 
lesser import — of employing a method di- 

25 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

rcctly opposed to the method of their own 
parents, and employing it simply because it 
is directly opposed. This is but too apt to 
be their interpretation of the phrase " mod- 
ernity in child nurture.*' But the children 
learn the lesson. They learn the other great 
and fundamental lessons of life, too, and 
learn them well, from these American fa- 
thers and mothers who are so friendly 
and companionable and sympathetic with 
them. 

Why should they not ? There is no an- 
tagonism between love and law. Parents are 
in a position of authority over their children; 
no risk of the strength of that position is in- 
volved in a friendship between parents and 
children anywhere. It is not remarkable that 
American parents should retain their author- 
ity over their children. What is noteworthy 
is that their children, less than any other chil- 
dren of the civilized world, rebel against it 
or chafe under it: they perceive so soon 
that their parents are governing them only 
because they are not wise enough to govern 
themselves ; they realize so early that gov- 
26 



THE CHILD AT HOME 

ernment, by some person or persons, is the 
estate in common of us all! 

One day last summer at the seashore I 
saw a tiny boy, starting from the bath-house 
of his family, laboriously drag a rather large 
piece of driftwood along the beach. Finally 
he carefully deposited it in the sand at a con- 
siderable distance from the bath-house. 

"Why did you bring that big piece of 
wood all the way up here?" I inquired as he 
passed me. 

" My father told me to," the child replied. 

" Why ? " I found myself asking. 

" Because I got it here ; and it is against 
the law of this town to take anything from 
this beach, except shells. Did you know that? 
I did n't ; my father just 'splained it to me." 

American fathers and mothers explain so 
many things to their children ! And Ameri- 
can children explain quite as great a number 
of things to their parents. They can ; be- 
cause they are not only friends, but familiar 
friends. We have all read Continental auto- 
biographies, of which the chapters under the 
general title "Early Years" contained rec- 
27 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

ords of fears based upon images implanted 
in the mind and flourishing there — images 
arising from some childish misapprehension 
or misinterpretation of some ordinary and 
perfectly explainable circumstance. "I was 
afraid to pass a closed closet alone after 
dark," one of these says. "I had heard of 
'skeletons in closets'; I knew there were 
none in our closets in the daytime, but I 
could n't be sure that they did not come to 
sleep in them at night; and I was too shy to 
inquire of my parents. What terrors I suf- 
fered ! I was half-grown before I under- 
stood what a 'skeleton in a closet' was." 

An American child would have discovered 
what one was within five minutes after hear- 
ing it first mentioned, provided he had the 
slightest interest in knowing. No American 
child is too shy to inquire of his parents con- 
cerning anything he may wish to know. Shy- 
ness is a veil children wear before strangers ; 
in the company of their intimates they lay it 
aside — and forget it. I n the autobiographies 
of Americans we shall not find many accounts 
of childish terrors arising from any reserve 
28 



THE CHILD AT HOME 

in the direction of asking questions. In 
American homes there are no closets whose 
doors children are afraid to pass, or to open, 
even after dark. 

"American children are all so different ! " 
an Englishman complained to me not long 
ago ; " as different as their several homes. 
One can make no statement about them that 
is conclusive." 

But can one not ? To be sure, they do vary, 
and their homes vary too ; but in one great, 
significant, fundamental particular they are 
all alike. In American homes the parents 
not only love their children, and the children 
their parents; their "way of loving" is such 
that one may say of them, " Their souls do 
bear an equal yoke of love." They and 
their parents are "chums." 



II 

THE CHILD AT PLAY 

Not long ago I happened to receive in the 
same mail three books on home games, writ- 
ten by three different American authors, and 
issued by three separate publishing-houses. 
In most respects the books were dissimilar; 
but in one interesting particular they were all 
alike : the games in them were so designed 
that, though children alone could play them 
well, children and grown-ups together could 
play them better. No one of the several au- 
thors suggested that he had any such theory 
in mind when preparing his book ; each one 
simply took it for granted that his "home 
games " would be played by the entire house- 
hold. Would not any of us in America, writ- 
ing a book of this description, proceed from 
precisely the same starting-point ? 

We all recollect the extreme amazement in 
the Castle of Dorincourt occasioned by the 

30 



THE CHILD AT PLAY 

sight of the Earl playing a "home game" 
with Little Lord Fauntleroy. No American 
grandfather thus engaged would cause the 
least ripple of surprise. Little Lord Fauntle- 
roy, we recall, had been born in America, and 
had lived the whole ten years of his life with 
Americans. He had acquired the habit, so 
characteristic of the children of our Nation, of 
including his elders in his games. Quite na- 
turally, on his first day at the Castle, he said 
to the Earl, "My new game — would n 't you 
like to play it with me, grandfather?" The 
Earl, we remember, was astonished. He had 
never been in America ! 

American grown-ups experience no aston- 
ishment when children invite them to partici- 
pate in their play. We are accustomed to such 
invitations. To our ready acceptance of them 
the children are no less used. "Will you play 
with us ? " they ask with engaging confidence. 
" Of course we will !" we find ourselves cor- 
dially responding. 

I chanced, not a great while ago, to be ill 
in a hospital on Christmas Day. Toward the 
middle of the morning, during the " hours 

31 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

for visitors," I heard a faint knock at my 
door. 

Before I could answer it the door opened, 
and a httle girl, her arms full of toys, softly 
entered. 

" Did you say ' Come in ' ? " she inquired. 

Without waiting for a reply, she carefully 
deposited her toys on the nurse's cot near 
her. Then, closing the door, she came and 
stood beside my bed, and gazed at me in 
friendly silence. 

"Merry Christmas!" I said. 

"Oh, Merry Christmas!" she returned, 
formally, dropping a courtesy. 

She was a sturdy, rosy-cheeked child, and, 
though wearing a fluffy white dress and slip- 
pers, she looked as children only look after 
a walk in a frosty wind. Clearly, she was not 
a patient. 

"Whose little girl are you?" I asked. 

"Papa's and mamma's," she said promptly. 

" Where are they ? " I next interrogated. 

"In papa's room — down the hall, around 
the corner. Papa is sick ; only, he 's better 
now, and will be all well soon. And mamma 
32 



THE CHILD AT PLAY 

and I came to see him, with what Santa Claus 
brought us." 

"I see," I commented. "And these are 
the things Santa Claus brought you?" I 
added, indicating the toys on the cot. "You 
have come, now, to show them to me ? " 

Her face fell a bit. " I came to play at them 
with you," she said. "Your nurse thought 
maybe youM like to, for a while. Are you too 
sick to play ? " she continued, anxiously ; 
" or too tired, or too busy ? " 

How seldom are any of us too sick to play ; 
or too tired, or too busy ! "I am not," I 
assured my small caller. " I should enjoy 
playing. What shall we begin with ? " I 
supplemented, glancing again toward the toy- 
bestrewn cot. 

" Oh, there are ever so many things ! " the 
little girl said. " But," she went on hesitat- 
ingly, ^^your things — perhaps you'd like — 
might I look at them first ? " 

Most evident among these things of mine 
was a small tree, bedizened, after the German 
fashion, with gilded nuts, fantastically shaped 
candies, and numerous tiny boxes, gayly 

33 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

tied with tinsel ribbons. "What's in the 
boxes — presents or jokes?" the little girl 
questioned. " Have you looked ? " 

" I had n't got that far, when you came," 
I told her; "but I rather think — jokes." 

"/ V want to know^^ she suggested. 

When I bade her examine them for me, 
she said : " Let 's play I am Santa Glaus and 
you are a little girl. I '11 hand you the boxes, 
and you open them." 

We did this, with much mutual enjoyment. 
The boxes, to my amusement and her delight, 
contained miniature pewter dogs and cats and 
dolls and dishes. " Why," my little compan- 
ion exclaimed, " they are n't jokes ; they are 
real present si They will bey^j/ right to have 
when little children come to see you ! " 

When the last of the boxes had been 
opened and my other less juvenile " things " 
surveyed, the child turned to her own treas- 
ures. " There are the two puzzles," she said, 
" and there is the big doll that can say ' Papa' 
and * Mamma,' and there is the paper doll, 
with lovely patterns and pieces to make more 
clothes out of for it, and there is a game papa 

34 



THE CHILD AT PLAY 

just loved. Perhaps you 'd like to play that 
best, too, 'cause you are sick, too? '* she said 
tentatively. 

I assented, and the little girl arranged the 
game on the table beside my bed, and ex- 
plained its " rules '* to me. We played at it 
most happily until my nurse, coming in, told 
my new-made friend that she must "say 
' Good-bye' now." 

My visitor at once collected her toys and 
prepared to go. At the door she turned. 
"Good-bye," she said, again dropping her 
prim courtesy. " I have had a very pleasant 
time." 

" So have I ! " I exclaimed. 

And I had had." She was so entertaining," 
I said to my nurse, " and her game was so 
interesting! " 

" It is not an uncommon game," my nurse 
remarked, with a smile ; "and she is just an 
ordinary, nice child!" 

America is full of ordinary, nice children 
who beguile their elders into playing with 
them games that are not uncommon. How 
much " pleasant time " is thereby spent 1 

35 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

"Where do American children learn to 
expect grown people to play with them?'*" 
an Englishwoman once asked me. " In the 
kindergarten ? " 

Undoubtedly they do. In no country ex- 
cept Germany is the kindergarten so integral 
a part of the national life as it is in America. 
In our cities, rich and poor alike send their 
children to kindergartens. Not only in the 
public and the private schools, but also in the 
social settlements, and even in the Sunday- 
schools, we have kindergarten departments. 
In the rural schools the teachers train the 
little "beginners " in accordance with kinder- 
garten principles. Even to places far away 
from any schools at all the kindergarten pene- 
trates. Only yesterday I saw a book, written 
by a kindergartner, dedicated to " mothers 
on the rolling prairie, the far-off ranch o, the 
rocky island, in the lonely light-house, the 
frontier settlement, the high-perched mining- 
camp,'* who, distant indeed from school kin- 
dergartens and their equipment, might wish 
help in making out of what materials they 
have well-equipped home kindergartens. 

36 



THE CHILD AT PLAY 

" Come, let us play with the children," the 
apostles of Froebel teach us. And, "Come, 
let us ask the grown-ups to play with us," 
they would seem unconsciously to instruct 
the children. 

One autumn a friend of mine, the mother 
of a three-year-old boy and of a daughter aged 
sixteen, said to me : "This is my daughter's 
first term in the high school ; she will need 
my help. My boy is just at the age when it 
takes all the spare time I have to keep him 
out of mischief; how shall I manage?" 

" Send the boy to kindergarten," I advised. 
" He is ready to go ; and it will be good for 
him. He will bring some of the ' occupations * 
home with him ; and they will keep him out 
of mischief for you." 

She sent the boy to a little kindergarten in 
the neighborhood. 

About two months later, I said to her, " I 
suppose the kindergarten has solved the 
problem of more spare time for your daugh- 
ter's new demands upon you ? " 

" Well — in a way," she replied, dubiously. 
" It gives me the morning free ; but — " 

37 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

" Does n't the boy bring home any ' occu- 
pations ' ? " I interposed. 

My friend laughed. " Yes," she said ; " he 
certainly does ! But he does n't want to ' oc- 
cupy ' himself alone with them ; he wants all 
of us to do it with him ! We have become 
quite expert at * weaving/ and ^ folding/ and 
* sewing ' ! But, on the other hand/' she went 
on, " he is n't so much trouble as he was. 
He wants us to play with him more, but he 
plays more intelligently. We take real pleas- 
ure in joining in his games, and — actually 
— in letting him share ours." 

This little boy, now five years old, came to 
see me the other day. 

" What would you like to do ? " I asked, 
when we had partaken of tea. " Shall we put 
the jig-saw puzzle together ; or should you 
prefer to have me tell you a story ? " 

" Tell me a story/' he said at once ; "and 
then I '11 tell you one. And t\itn you tell an- 
other — and then /'//tell another — " He 
broke off, to draw a long breath. " It 's a 
game," he continued, after a moment. " We 
play it in kindergarten." 

38 



THE CHILD AT PLAY 

" Do you enjoy telling stones more than 
hearing them told ? " I inquired, when we 
had played this game to the extent of three 
stories on either side. 

" No," my little boy friend replied. " I 
like hearing stories told more than anything. 
But /^^/ is n't a game; that's just being-told- 
stories. The game is taking-turns-telling- 
stories." He enunciated each phrase as 
though it were a single word. 

His mother had spoken truly when she 
said that her little boy had learned to play 
intelligently. He had learned, also, to include 
his elders in his games on equal terms. Small 
wonder that they took real pleasure in play- 
ing with him. 

The children cordially welcome us to their 
games. They ask us to be children with 
them. As heartily, they would have us be- 
speak their company in our games ; they are 
willing to try to be grown-up with us. 

I was visiting a family recently, in which 
there is but one small child, a boy of eight. 
One evening we were acting charades. Di- 
vided into camps, we chose words in turn, 

39 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

and in turn were chosen to superintend the 
"acting-out" of the particular word. It hap- 
pened that the word " Psychical-research," 
and the turn of the eight-year-old boy to be 
stage-manager coincided. Every one in his 
camp laughed, but no one so much as re- 
motely suggested that the word or the stage- 
manager be changed. 

"What does it mean/Psychical-research * ?" 
the boy made question. 

We laughed still more, but we genuinely 
tried to make the term comprehensible to the 
child's mind. 

This led to such prolonged and lively ar- 
gument that the little stage-manager finally 
observed: "I don't see how it can mean all 
that all of you say. Can't we let the whole- 
word act of it go, and act out the rest? We 
can, you know — ' Sigh,' ' kick,' 'all' ; and 
*re ' (like in music, you know), and ' search! 

"Oh, no," we demurred; "we must do it 
properly, or not at all!" 

" Well, then," said the boy, in a quaintly 
resigned tone of voice, " talk to me about it, 
until I know what it is ! " 
4^ 



THE CHILD AT PLAY 

In spite of hints from the other camp not 
to overlap the time allotted us, in the face of 
messages from them to hurry, regardless of 
their protests against our dilatoriness, we did 
talk to that little eight-year-old boy about 
** Psychical-research "until he understood its 
meaning sufficiently to plan his final act. " If 
he is playing with us, then he is playing 
with us," his father somewhat cryptically re- 
marked ; " and he must know the details of 
the game." 

This playing with grown-ups does not 
curtail the play in which children engage 
with their contemporaries. There are games 
that are distinctly "children's games." We 
all know of what stuff they are made, for 
most of us have played them in our time — 
running-games, jumping-games, shouting- 
games. By stepping to our windows nearly 
any afternoon, we may see some of them 
in process. But we shall not be invited to par- 
ticipate. At best, the children will pause for a 
moment to ask, " Did you play it this way ? " 

Very likely we did not. Each generation 
plays the old games ; every generation plays 
41 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

them in a slightly new way. The present 
generation would seem to play them with a 
certain self-consciousness ; without that «^^«- 
don of an earlier time. 

A short while ago I happened to call upon 
a friend of mine on an afternoon when, her 
nursemaid being " out," she was alone with 
her children — a boy of seven and a girl of 
five. I found them together in the nursery ; 
my friend was sewing, and the children were 
playing checkers. Apparently, they were en- 
tirely engrossed in their game. Immediately 
after greeting me they returned to it, and 
continued it with seeming obliviousness of 
the presence of any one excepting themselves. 
But when their mother, in the course of a 
few moments, rose, and said to me : " Let 's 
go down to the library and have tea," both 
the children instantly stopped playing — 
though one of them was in the very thick of 
" taking a king " — and cried, " Oh, don*t 
go ; stay with us!" 

" My dears," my friend said, "you don't 
need us ; you have your game. Are n't you 
happy with it ? " 

42 



THE CHILD AT PLAY 

" Why, yes," the little girl admitted ; " but 
we want you to see us being happy!" 

Only to-day, as I came up my street, a 
crowd of small children burst upon me from 
behind a hedge ; and, shouting and gestic- 
ulating, surrounded me. Their faces were 
streaked with red, and blue, and yellow lines, 
applied with crayons ; feathers of various 
domestic kinds ornamented their hats and 
caps, and they waved in the air broken laths, 
presumably gifts from a builder at work in 
the vicinity. 

" We are Indians! " they shrieked ; " wild 
Indians ! See our war-paint, and feathers, 
and tomahawks! We hunt the pale face!" 

While I sought about for an appropriate 
answer to make, my little neighbors suddenly 
became calm. 

" Don't we children have fun ? " one of 
them questioned me. " You like to see us 
having fun, don't you?" 

I agreed, and again their war-whoops 
began. They followed me to my door in a 
body. Inside I still heard them playing, but 
with lessened din. Several times during the 

43 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

afternoon, hearing their noise increase, I 
looked out ; each time I saw that the arrival 
of another grown-up pale face was the occa- 
sion of the climactic momentin thegame. In 
order to be wild Indians with perfect happi- 
ness the small players demanded an appre- 
ciative audience to see them being happy. 

Some of us in America are prone to depre- 
cate in the children of our Nation this pleased 
consciousness of their own enjoyment, this 
desire for our presence as sympathetic on- 
lookers at those of their games in which we 
cannot join. We must not allow ourselves 
to forget that it is a state of mind fostered 
largely by our National habit of treating chil- 
dren as familiars and equals. Our satisfaction 
in their pleasures we mention in their hear- 
ing. If they are aware that we like to see them 
" being happy," it is because we have told 
them, and told them repeatedly. We do not,, 
as in a former time, "spell some of our 
words'* in their company, in order that they 
may not know all we say. On the contrary,, 
we pronounce all our words with especial 
clearness, and even define such as are ob- 

44 



THE CHILD AT PLAY 

scure, that the children not only may, but 
must, fully understand us when we speak 
" before them." Unquestionably this takes 
from the play of the children self-forgetful- 
ness of one kind, but sometimes it gives to 
them self-forgetfulness of another, a rarer 
kind. 

I know a family of children, lovers of 
games which involve running races. Several 
years ago one of the boys of this family died. 
Since his death the other children run no 
more races. 

" We like running races just as much," 
one of the girls explained to me one evening, 
as we sat by the fire and talked about her 
dead brother ; " but, you know, he always 
liked them best, because he generally won. 
He loved to have mother see him winning. 
He was always getting her to come and watch 
him do it. And mother Hked it, and used to 
tell other people about it. We don't run 
races now, because it might remind mother 
too much." 

No matter how joyously American child- 
ren may play with their elders, or with their 

45 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

contemporaries, whatever enhancement their 
satisfaction in play with one another may gain 
from the presence of grown-up spectators, 
they are not likely to become so dependent 
upon the one, nor so self-conscious by reason 
of the other, that they will relinquish — or, 
worse still, never know — the dear delights 
of "playing alone." Games played in com- 
pany may be the finest prose — they are yet 
prose; games played alone are pure poetry. 
The children of our Nation are not without 
that imagination which, on one day or an- 
other, impels a child to wander, " lonely as a 
cloud," along the path of dreamful, solitary 
play. 

How often a child who, to our eyes, ap- 
pears to be doing nothing whatever, is "play- 
ing alone" a delectable game ! Probably, only 
once in a hundred times, and then, by the 
merest accident, do we discover what that 
game is. 

Among my child friends there is a little 

boy who takes great pleasure in seeing dramas 

acted. One spring day I took him to an 

open-air presentation of "As You Like It." 

46 



THE CHILD AT PLAY 

The comedy was charmingly given in a clear- 
ing in a beautiful private park. Orlando had 
"real" trees and hawthorns and brambles 
upon which to hang his verses ; and he made 
lavish use of them. 

The fancy of my small friend was quite 
captivated by what he called " playing hide- 
and-go-seek with poems." "What fun he 
has, watching her find them and not letting 
her know he hid them!" he exclaimed. 

Later in the season I went to spend a few 
days at the country home of his parents. 
Early one morning, from my window, I es- 
pied the little boy, stealthily moving about 
under the trees in the adjacent apple orchard. 

At breakfast he remarked to me, casually, , 
"It's nice in the orchard — all apple blos- 
soms." 

" Will you go out there with me ? " I asked. 

" P'aps not to-day," he made reply. 
" But," he hazarded, "you could go by your- 
self. It's nice," he repeated; "all apple blos- 
soms. Get close to the trees, and smell 
them." 

It was a pleasant plan for a May morning. 
47 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

I lost no time in putting it into practice. 
Involuntarily I sought that corner of the or- 
chard in which I had seen my small friend. 
Mindful of his counsel, I got close to the 
apple blossoms and smelled them. As I did 
so I noticed a crumpled sheet of paper in a 
crotch of one of the trees. I no sooner saw 
it than I seized it, and, smoothing it out, 
read, written in a primary-school hand : — 

«' The rose is red. 
The violet blue. 
Sugar is sweet. 
And so are you." 

Need I say that I had scarcely read this 
before I entered upon an exhaustive search 
among the other trees ? My amused efforts 
were well rewarded. Between two flower- 
laden branches I descried another " poem," 
in identical handwriting : — 

"A birdie with a yellow bill 
Hopped upon the window-sill. 
Cocked his shining eye and said 
'Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-head I* ** 

In a tiny hollow I found still another, by 
the same hand : — 

48 



THE CHILD AT PLAY 

** *T was brillig, and the slithy toves 
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe ; 
All mimsy were the borogoves. 
And the mome raths outgrabe." 

As I went back to the house, bearing my 
findings, I met my little boy friend. He 
tried not to see what I carried. 

" I gathered these from the apple trees," 
I said, holding out the verses. " They are 
poems." 

He made no motion to take the " poems." 
His eyes danced. But neither then did he 
say nor since has he said that the verses 
were his ; that he was the Orlando who had 
caused them to grow upon the trees. 

Another child of my acquaintance, a little 
girl, I discovered in an even sweeter game 
for "playing alone." She chanced to call 
upon me one afternoon just as I was taking 
from its wrappings an edition de luxe of 
" Pippa Passes." Her joy in the exquisite 
illustrations with which the book was embel- 
lished even exceeded mine. 

" Is the story in the book as lovely as the 
pictures?" she queried. 

49 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

" Yes," I assured her. 

Then, at her urgent request, I told her 
the tale of the " little black-eyed pretty sing- 
ing Felippa"; of her "single day," and of 
her singing that " righted all again" on that 
holiday in Asolo. 

The child was silent for a moment after I 
had finished the story. "Do you like it?" I 
inquired. 

" Um — yes," she mused. " Let me look 
at the pictures some more," she asked, with 
sudden eagerness. 

I handed her the book, and she pored 
over it for a long time. "The houses then 
were not like the houses now — were they?" 
she said ; " and the people dressed in funny 
clothes." 

The next Saturday, at an early hour, I 
heard beneath my window a childish voice 
singing a kindergarten song. I peeped out. 
There stood my little friend. I was careful 
to make no sound and to keep well in the 
shadow. The small girl finished her song, 
and softly ran away. 

"Your little girl serenaded me the other 

50 



THE CHILD AT PLAY 

morning," I said to her mother when I saw 
her a few days afterward. The child had 
shown so slight an interest in anything in my 
book except the pictures that I did not yet 
connect her singing with it. 

"You, too!" exclaimed the little girFs 
mother. " She evidently serenaded the en- 
tire neighborhood ! All day Saturday, her 
only holiday, she went around, singing under 
various windows ! I wonder what put the 
idea into her head." 

"Did you ask her?" I questioned, with 
much curiosity. 

"Yes," answered the child^s mother; "but 
she only smiled, and looked embarrassed, so 
I said nothing further. She seemed to want 
to keep her secret, the dear baby! So I 
thought I'd let her!" 

And I — I, too, kept it. "Yes, do let 
her," was all I said. 

American children, when "playing alone," 
impersonate the heroes and heroines of the 
dramas they see, or the stories they are told, 
or the books they read (how much more 
often they must do it than we suspect our 

51 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

memories of our own childish days will teach 
us), but when they play together, even when 
they "play at books that they have read,'* 
they seldom "pretend." A group of small 
boys who have just read " Robin Hood" do 
not say : "Wouldn't it be fun to play that 
we are Robin Hood and his Merry Men, 
and that our grove is Sherwood Forest?" 
They are more apt to say : " It would be 
good sport ior us — shooting with bows and 
arrows. We might get some, and fix up a tar- 
get somewhere and practise." The circle of 
little girls who have read " Mary's Meadow'* 
do not propose that they play at being Mary. 
They decide instead upon doing, in their own 
proper persons, what Mary did in hers. They 
can play together, the children of our Nation, 
but they seem unable to "pretend" together. 
They are perhaps too self-conscious. 

It IS a significant circumstance that yearly- 
there are published in America a large num- 
ber of books for children telling them " how 
to make " various things. A great part of 
their play consists in making something — 
from a sunken garden to an air-ship. 

52 



THE CHILD AT PLAY 

I recently had a letter from a boy in 
which he said : " The boys here are getting 
wireless sets. We have to buy part of the 
things ; but we make as many of them as 
we can." 

And how assiduously they attempt to 
make as many as they can of the other 
things we grown-ups make ! They imitate 
our play ; and, in a spirit of play, they con- 
trive to copy to its last and least detail our 
work. If we play golf or tennis, they also 
play these games. Are we painters of pic- 
tures or writers of books, they too aspire to 
paint or to write ! 

It cannot be denied that we encourage 
the children in this "endless imitation." We 
not only have diminutive golf sticks and 
tennis rackets manufactured for their use as 
soon as they would play our games ; when 
they show signs of toying with our work, 
we promptly set about providing them with 
the proper means to that end. 

One of our best-known magazines for 
children devotes every month a consider- 
able number of its pages to stories and 
53 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

poems and drawings contributed by chil- 
dren. Furthermore, it offers even such re- 
wards as we grown-up writers and painters 
are offered for " available " products. More- 
over, the young contributors are instructed 
in the intricacies of literary and artistic eti- 
quette. They are taught how to prepare 
manuscripts and drawings for the editorial 
eye. The " rules " given these children are 
identical with the regulations governing 
well-conducted grown-up writers and artists 
— excepting that the children are com- 
manded to " state age/' and " have the con- 
tribution submitted indorsed as wholly ori- 
ginal ! " 

It is a noteworthy fact that hundreds of 
children in America send in contributions, 
month after month, year after year, to this 
magazine. Even more significant is it that 
they prepare these contributions with all the 
conscientious care of grown-up writers or 
painters to whom writing or painting is the 
chiefest reality of life. So whole-heartedly 
do the children play at being what their 
elders are ! ^ 

54 



THE DEAR DELIGHTS OF PLAYING ALONE 



THE CHILD AT PLAY 

An Italian woman once asked me, "The 
American children — what do they employ 
as toys ? " 

I could only reply, "Almost anything; 
almost everything! '* 

When we are furthest from seeing the 
toy possibilities of a thing, they see it. I 
have among my treasures a libation cup 
and a ushabti figurine — votive offerings 
from the Temple of Osiris, at Abydos. 

A short time ago a little boy friend of 
mine lighted upon them in their safe re- 
treat. " What are these?" he inquired. 

"They came from Egypt — " I began. 

" Oh, really and truly P " he cried. " Did 
they come from the Egypt in the poem — 

** 'Where among the desert sands 
Some deserted city stands. 
There I '11 come when I *m a man 
With a camel caravan ; 
And in a corner find the toys 
Of the old Egyptian boys ' ? " 

He spent a happy hour playing with the 
libation cup and the ushabti — trophies of 
one of the most remarkable explorations of 

55 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

our era. I did not tell him what they were. 
He knew concerning them all he needed to 
know — that they could be "employed as 
toys." Perhaps the very tiniest of the " old 
Egyptian boys *' had known only this, too. 

" Little girls do not play with dolls in 
these days ! ** is a remark that has been 
made with great frequency of late years. 
Those of us who have many friends among 
little girls often wonder what is at the basis 
of this rumor. There have always been girls 
who did not care for dolls. In the old-fash- 
ioned story for girls there was invariably one 
such. In "Little Women/* as we all recall, 
it was Jo. No doubt the persons who say 
that little girls no longer play with dolls 
count among their childish acquaintances a 
disproportionate number of Jos. Playing 
with dolls would seem to be too funda- 
mentally little-girlish ever to fall into de- 
suetude. 

" Girls, as well as boys, play with dogs in 

these days!" is another plaintive cry we 

often hear. But were there ever days when 

this was not the case? From that far-oiF 

56 



THE CHILD AT PLAY 

day when Iseult " had always a little brachet 
with her that Tristram gave her the first 
time that ever she came into Cornwell," 
to the time when Dora cuddled Jip, even 
down to our own day, when the heroine of 
"Queed" walks forth with her Behemoth, 
girls both in fact and in fiction have played 
with dogs ; played with them no less than 
boys. This proclivity on the part of the lit- 
tle girls of our Nation is not distinctively 
American, nor especially childish, nor par- 
ticularly girl-like; it is merely human. 

In few activities do the children of our 
Nation reveal what we call the "American 
sense of humor " so clearly as in their play. 
Slight ills, and even serious misfortunes, they 
instinctively endeavor to lift and carry with 
a laugh. It would be difficult to surpass the 
gay heroism to which they sometimes at- 
tain. 

Most of us remember the little hunch- 
backed boy in " Little Men " who, when the 
children played " menagerie," chose the part 
of the dromedary. " Because," he explained, 
" I have a hump on my back 1" 

57 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

Among my acquaintances there is a little 
girl who is blind. One day I invited her to 
go picnicking with a party of normal chil- 
dren, one of whom was her elder sister. She 
was accustomed to the company of children 
who could see, and she showed a ready dis- 
position to join in the games of the other 
picnickers. Her sister stayed close beside her 
and guarded and guided her. 

" Let 's play blind man's buff," one of the 
children heedlessly suggested after a long 
course of " drop-the-handkerchief." 

The other children with seeing eyes in- 
stantly looked at the child who was sightless, 
and whispered, " Ssh ! You '11 hurt her feel- 
ings!" 

But the little blind girl scrambled eagerly 
to her feet. "Yes," she said, brightly; "let's 
play blind man's buff! / can be ' It' all tht 
time ! " 

There is a phrase that has been very widely 
adopted by Americans. Scarcely one of us 
but uses it — " playing the game." Our high- 
est commendation of a man or a woman has 
come to be, "He plays the game," or "She 
58 



THE CHILD AT PLAY 

plays the game." Another phrase, often upon 
our JIps, is " according to the rules of the 
game." We Americans talk of the most 
sacred things of life in the vocabulary of chil- 
dren at play. May not this be because the 
children of our Nation play so well; so much 
better than we grown-ups do anything ? 



Ill 

THE COUNTRY CHILD 

One spring, not long ago, a friend of mine, 
knowing that I had a desire to spend the 
summer in the " real country," said to me, 
" Why don't you go to a farm somewhere 
in New England ? Nothing could be more 
' really countrified ' than that ! You would 
get what you want there." 

Her advice rather appealed to my fancy. 
I at once set about looking for a New Eng- 
land farmhouse in which I might be received 
as a "summer boarder." Hearing of one 
that was situated in a particularly healthful 
and beautiful section of New England, I wrote 
to the woman who owned and operated it, 
telling her what I required, and asking her 
whether or no she could provide me with it. 
" Above all things," I concluded my letter, 
" I want quiet." 

Her somewhat lengthy reply ended with 
60 



THE COUNTRY CHILD 

these words : " The bedroom just over the 
music-room is the quietest in the house, be- 
cause no one is in the music-room excepting 
for a social hour after supper. I can let you 
have that bedroom." 

My friend had said that nothing was so 
" really countrified " as a New England farm. 
But a " music-room," a " social hour after 
supper ! " The terms suggested things dis- 
tinctly urban. 

I sent another letter to the woman to whom 
this amazing farmhouse belonged. " I am 
afraid I cannot come," I wrote. " I want a 
simpler place." Then, yielding to my intense 
curiosity, I added: "Are many of your 
boarders musical? Is the music-room for 
their use? " 

" No place could be simpler than this," 
she answered, by return mail. " I don't 
know whether any of my boarders this year 
will be musical or not. Some years they 
have been. The music-room is n't for my 
boarders, especially ; it is for my niece. She 
is very musical, but she does n't get much 
time for practising in the summer." 
6i 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

She went on to say that she hoped I would 
decide to take the bedroom over the music- 
room. I did. I had told her that, above all 
things, I desired quiet ; but, after reading her 
letters, I think I wished, above all things, to 
see the music-room, and the niece who was 
musical. 

" She will probably be a shy, awkward 
girl," one of my city neighbors said to me; 
" and no doubt she will play ' The Maiden's 
Prayer* on a melodeon which will occupy 
one corner of the back sitting-room. You 
will see." 

In order to reach the farm it was necessary 
not only to take a journey on a train, but 
also to drive three miles over a hilly road. 
The little station at which I changed from 
the train to an open two-seated carriage in 
waiting for me was the usual rural village, 
with its one main street, its commingled 
post-office and dry-goods and grocery store, 
and its small white meeting-house. 

The farm, as we approached it, called to 
mind the pictures of old New England farms 
with which all of us are familiar. The house 
62 



THE COUNTRY CHILD 

itself was over a hundred years old, I after- 
ward learned ; and had for that length of 
time " been in the family " of the woman 
with whom I had corresponded. 

She was on the broad doorstone smiling 
a welcome when, after an hour's drive, the 
carriage at last came to a stop. Beside her 
was her niece, the girl whom I had been so 
impatient to meet. She was neither shy nor 
awkward. 

" Are you tired?" she inquired. "What 
should you like to do ? Go to your room 
or rest downstairs until supper-time ? Sup- 
per will be ready in about twenty minutes." 

"I 'd like to see the music-room," I found 
myself saying. 

" Oh," exclaimed the girl, her face bright- 
ening, " are you musical ? How nice ! " 

As she spoke she led the way into the 
music-room. It was indeed a back sitting- 
room. Its windows opened upon the barn- 
yard ; glancing out, I saw eight or ten cows, 
just home from pasture, pushing their ways 
tothedrinking-trough. I looked around the 
little room. On the walls were framed pho- 

63 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

tographs of great composers, on the mantel- 
shelf was a metronome, on the centre-table 
were two collections of classic piano pieces, 
and in a corner was, — not a melodeon, — 
but a piano. The maker's name was on it 
— a name famous in two continents. 

" Your aunt told me you were musical," 
I said to the girl. " I see that the piano is 
your instrument." 

" Yes," she assented. " But I don't play 
very well. I have n't had many lessons. 
Only one year with a really good teacher." 

" Who was your teacher ? " I asked idly. 
I fully expected her to say, " Some one in 
the village through which you came." 

" Perhaps you know my teacher," she 
replied ; and she mentioned the name of one 
of the best pianists and piano teachers in 
New England. 

" Most of the time I 've studied by my- 
self," she went on ; " but one year auntie 
had me go to town and have good lessons." 

At supper this girl waited on the table, 
and after supper she washed the dishes and 
made various preparations for the next 
64 



THE COUNTRY CHILD 

morning's breakfast. Then she joined her 
aunt and the boarders, of whom there were 
nine, on the veranda. 

" I should so like to hear you play some- 
thing on the piano," I said to her. 

She at once arose, and, followed by me, 
went into the music-room, which was just 
off the veranda. " I only play easy things," 
she said, as she seated herself at the piano. 

Whereupon she played, with considerable 
skill, one of Schumann's simpler composi- 
tions, one of Schubert's, and one of Grieg's. 
Then, turning around on the piano-stool, she 
asked me, " Do you like Debussy ? " 

I thought of what my neighbor had pro- 
phesied concerning "The Maiden's Prayer." 
Debussy ! And this girl was a country girl, 
born and bred on that dairy farm, educated 
at the little district school of the vicinity; 
and, moreover, trained to take a responsible 
part in the work of the farm both in winter 
and in summer. Her family for generations 
had been " country people." 

It was not surprising that she had made 
the acquaintance of Debussy's music ; nor 
65 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

that she had at her tongue^s end all the 
arguments for and against it. Her music- 
teacher was, of course, accountable for this. 
What was remarkable was that she had had 
the benefit of that particular teacher's in- 
struction ; that, country child though she 
was, she had been given exactly the kind, if 
not the amount, of musical education that a 
city child of musical tastes would have been 
given. 

My neighbor had predicted a shy, awk- 
ward girl, a melodeon, and "The Maiden's 
Prayer." One of our favorite fallacies in 
America is that our country people are 
"countrified." Nothing could be further 
from the truth, especially in that most im- 
portant matter, the up-bringing of their 
children. Country parents, like city par- 
ents, try to get the best for their children. 
That " best " is very apt to be identical with 
what city parents consider best. Circum- 
stances may forbid their giving it to their 
children as lavishly as do city parents ; con- 
ditions may force them to alter it in various 
ways in order to fit it to the needs of boys 
66 




"THE CHILDREN THEY ARE SUCH DEARS ! " 



THE COUNTRY CHILD 

and girls who live on a farm, and not on a 
city street ; but in some sort they attempt 
to obtain it, and, having obtained it, to give 
it to their children. 

They are as ambitious for the education 
of their children as city parents; and to an 
amazing extent they provide for them a sim- 
ilar academic training. An astonishing pro- 
portion of the students in our colleges come 
from country homes, in which they have 
learned to desire collegiate experience; from 
country schools, where they have received 
the preparation necessary to pass the re- 
quired college entrance examinations. Sur- 
rounded, as we in cities are, by schools espe- 
cially planned, especially equipped, to make 
children ready for college, we may well won- 
der how country children in rural district 
schools, with their casual schedules and 
meagre facilities, are ever so prepared. By 
visiting even a few district schools we may 
in part discover. 

I happened, not a great while ago, to 
spend an autumn month on a farm in a very 
sparsely settled section of New Hampshire. 
67 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

One morning at breakfast, shortly after 
Labor Day, my landlady said : " School 
opens next week. The teacher is coming 
here to board for the winter. I expect her 
to-day." 

" Where does she come from ? " I asked. 

" From Smith College/* the farmer re- 
plied, unexpectedly. "This is her second 
year of teaching our school." 

The school-teacher arrived late in the 
afternoon. My landlady was " expecting " 
her; so was I, no less eagerly. 

"Why were you interested in me?" she 
inquired, when, on further acquaintance, I 
confessed this to her. 

" Because, with a training that fits you 
for work in a carefully graded school or a 
college, you chose to teach here. Why did 

" For three reasons," she answered. 
" Country life is better for my health than 
city life ; the people around here are thor- 
oughly awake to the importance of educa- 
tion ; and the children — they are such dears ! 
You must see them when school opens." 
68 



THE COUNTRY CHILD 

I did see them then. Also, I saw them 
before that time. When the news of their 
teacher's arrival reached them, they came " by- 
two, and threes, and fuller companies "to wel- 
come her. They ranged in age from a boy and 
a girl of fifteen to two little girls of six. Each 
and every one was rapturously glad to see 
the teacher; they all brought her small gifts, 
and all of them bore messages from their 
homes, comprising a score of invitations 
to supper, the loan of a tent for the remain- 
der of the mild weather, and the offer of a 
" lift " to and from school on stormy days. 

The teacher accepted these tributes as a 
matter of course. She was genuinely glad 
to see her old pupils. In her turn, she sent 
messages to their several homes, and gave 
into the children's hands tokens she had pur- 
posely gathered together for them. " We'll 
meet on Monday at the school-house," she 
finally said; and the children, instantly re- 
sponding to the implied suggestion, bade her 
good-bye, and went running down the dusty 
road. Each one of them lived at least a mile 
away ; many of them more than two miles. 
69 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

On Monday I accompanied the teacher 
to school. The school-house was a small, 
one-roomed, wooden building. It contained 
little besides a few rows of desks and benches 
for the children, two or three maps, and 
blackboards, a tiny closet filled with worn 
books, the teacher's desk, and a coal stove. 
But it had windows on three sides, and was 
set down in the midst of a grassy meadow 
bordered with a stone wall. 

There were fourteen pupils. They were 
all assembled in the school-yard when we 
arrived. The boys were playing baseball, 
and the girls, perched on the stone wall, were 
watching them. The moment they saw the 
teacher boys and girls alike came to escort 
her to her place in the school-house. When 
she was in it, they took their own places — 
those they had occupied during the former 
term. There was one "new" pupil, a small 
boy. He had been so frequently a "visiting 
scholar'* the previous year that his newness 
was not very patent. There was a desk that 
he also claimed as his. 

" We will sing ' America/ " were the words 
70 



THE COUNTRY CHILD 

with which the teacher commenced the new 
school year, " and then we will go on with 
our work, beginning where we left off in the 
spring." 

We hear a great deal at the present time 
concerning the education of the "particular 
child." In the very best of our private 
schools in the city each pupil is regarded as 
a separate and distinct individual, and taught 
as such. This ideal condition of things pre- 
vailed in that little district school in the 
farming region of New Hampshire. That 
teacher had fourteen pupils ; practically, she 
had fourteen " grades." Even when it hap- 
pened that two children were taught the 
same lesson, each one was taught it individ- 
ually. 

" They are all so different ! " the teacher 
said, when I commented upon the difference 
of her methods with the various children. 
" That boy, who hopes to go to college and 
then teach, needs to get one thing from his 
history lesson ; and that girl, who intends to 
be a post-ofiice clerk as soon as she finishes 
school, needs to get something else." 
71 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

She did not aim to prepare her pupils 
for college. The district school was only a 
"grammar school." There was a high school 
in the nearest village, which was three miles 
away ; she made her pupils ready for en- 
trance into that. In order to attend the high 
school, more than one child in that neigh- 
borhood, year after year, in sunshine and 
storm, walked two and three miles twice 
daily. Many a child who lived still farther 
away was provided by an interested father 
with a horse and a conveyance with which 
to make the two journeys a day. No won- 
der the teacher of that district school felt 
that the people in the neighborhood were 
" thoroughly awake to the importance of 
education " ! 

As for the children — she had said that 
they were " such dears ! " They were. I re- 
member, in particular, two ; a brother and 
sister. She was eight years old, and he was 
nine. They were inseparable companions. 
On bright days they ran to school hand in 
hand. When it rained, they trudged along 
the muddy road under one umbrella. 

72 



THE COUNTRY CHILD 

The school-teacher had taught the little 
girl George Eliot's poem " Brother and Sis- 
ter." She could repeat it word for word, ex- 
cepting the line, " I held him wise." She 
always said that, " I hold him tight." This 
" piece " the small girl " spoke " on a Fri- 
day afternoon. The most winning part of 
her altogether lovely recitation was the smile 
with which she glanced at her brother as she 
announced its title. He returned her smile ; 
when she finished her performance, he led 
the applause. 

Before the end of my visit I became very 
intimate with that brother and sister. I 
chanced to be investigating the subject of 
"juvenile books." 

" What books have you ?" I inquired of 
the little girl. 

" Ever so many of all kinds," she replied. 
" Come to our house and look at them," 
she added cordially. 

Their house proved to be the near-by 
farm. One of the best in that section, it was 
heated with steam and furnished with run- 
ning water and plumbing. It had also a lo- 

73 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

cal and long-distance telephone. The bro- 
ther and sister were but two of a family of 
seven children. Their father, who was a 
member of the school committee, and their 
mother, who was a graduate of a city high 
school, were keenly interested in, and, more- 
over, very well informed on, the subject of 
pedagogy. They had read a great number 
of books relating to it, and were in the habit 
of following in the newspapers the proce- 
dures of the National Education Associa- 
tion's Conventions. 

"Your children have a large number of 
exceedingly good books ! " I exclaimed, as I 
looked at the many volumes on a day ap- 
pointed for that purpose by the mother of 
the family. "I wish all children had as fine 
a collection!" 

" Country children must have books," she 
replied, " if they are going to be educated at 
all. City children can see things, and learn 
about them that way. Country children have 
to read about them if they are to know about 
them." 

The books were of many types — poetry, 
74 



THE COUNTRY CHILD 

fiction, historical stories, nature study, and 
several volumes of the " how to make '* va- 
riety. All of these were of the best of their 
several kinds — identical with the books 
found in the "Children's Room*' in any 
well-selected public library. Some of them 
had been gifts to the children from " sum« 
mer boarders," but the majority had been 
chosen and purchased by their parents. 

"We hunt up the names of good books 
for children in the book review departments 
of the magazines," the mother said. 

When I asked what magazines, she men- 
tioned three. Two she and her husband 
"took"; the other she borrowed monthly 
from a neighbor, on an " exchange " basis. 

No other children in that region were so 
abundantly supplied with books ; but all 
whom I met liked to read. Their parents, 
in most cases unable to give them numerous 
books, had, in almost every instance, taught 
them to love readinpf. 

One boy with whom I became friends 
had a birthday while I was in the neighbor- 
hood. I had heard him express a longing to 
75 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

read " The Lays of Ancient Rome," which 
neither he nor any other child in the vicin- 
ity possessed, so I presented him with a copy 
of it. 

" Would you mind if I gave it to the li- 
brary ? " he asked. " Then the other child- 
ren around could read it, too." 

"The library!" I exclaimed. 

" Oh, I don't mean the one down in the 
village," he hastened to explain. "I mean the 
one here, near us. Have n't you been to it? " 

When he found that I had not, he offered 
to go with me to see it. It turned out to be 
a "lean-to" in a farmhouse that was in a 
rather central position with relation to the 
surrounding farms. The library consisted of 
about two hundred volumes. The librarian 
was an elderly woman who lived in the house. 
One was allowed, she told me, to take out 
as many books as one wished, and to keep 
them until one had finished reading them. 

" Do you want to take out any ? " she in- 
quired. 

After examining the four or five shelves 
that comprised the library, I wanted to take 
76 



THE COUNTRY CHILD 

out at least fifty. The books, especially the 
"juvenile books," were those of a former 
generation. Foremost among them were the 
"Rollo Books," "Sandford and Merton," 
Mary Howitt's " Story-Book," and "The 
Parents' Assistant." 

" Who selected the books ? " I asked. 

"Nobody exactly j^/^^/^^ them," the libra- 
rian said. " Every one around here gave a few 
from their collections, so*s we could have a 
near-to library — principally on account of 
the children. I live most convenient to every 
one hereabouts ; so I had shelves put up in 
my lean-to for them." 

News travels very rapidly indeed in the 
country. My boy friend told some of the 
other children that I was reading the oldest 
books in the library. " She takes them out 
by the armfuls," I overheard him remark. 

No doubt he made more comments that 
I did not overhear ; for one morning a small 
girl called to see me, and, after a few prelim- 
inaries, said, " If you are through with ' The 
Fairchild Family,' may I have it? You like 
it awfully much, don't you?" 

11 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

Not only in the secular teaching of their 
children do thoughtful country parents, in 
common with careful fathers and mothers 
living elsewhere, try to obtain the best means 
and to use them to the best ends ; in the re- 
ligious instruction of their children they make 
a similar attempt. They are not content to 
let their children learn entirely at home, to 
depend solely upon parental guidance. The 
church, and even the Sunday school, are in- 
tegral parts in the up-bringing of the most 
happily situated country children. The little 
white meeting-houses in the small rural 
villages are familiar places to the country 
child — joyously familiar places, at that. 
The only weekly outing that falls to the 
lot of the younger children of country 
parents is the Sunday trip to church and 
Sunday school. 

What do they get from it ? Undoubtedly, 
very much what city children receive from the 
church and the Sunday school — in quantity 
and in quality. There is a constant pleasure 
from the singing ; an occasional glimmer of 
illumination from the sermon; and an un- 

78 



THE COUNTRY CHILD 

failing delight from the Bible stories. We can 
be reasonably sure that all children get thus 
much from the habitual church and Sunday- 
school attendance. Some, irrespective of city 
or country environment, glean more. 

A small country boy of my acquaintance 
brought from Sunday school one of the most 
unique versions of a Scriptural passage with 
which I have ever met. "Did you go to 
church this morning ? " I inquired of him, one 
Sunday afternoon, when, catching a glimpse 
of me under the trees near his home, he came, 
as he explained, to " pass the time of day " 
with me. 

" Yes,'* he answered; " and I went to Sun- 
day school, too." 

"And what was your lesson about?" I 
asked. 

" Oh, about the roses — " 

" Roses ? " I interrupted, in surprise. 

" Yes," the little boy went on ; " the roses 
— you know — in the gardens." 

" I don't remember any Sunday-school 
lesson about them," I said. 

" But there is one ; we had it to-day. The 

79 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

roses, they made the children have good 
manners. Then, one day, the children were 
greedy ; and their manners were bad. Don't 
you know about it ? " he added anxiously. 

He was but five years old. I told him 
about Moses; I explained painstakingly just 
who the Children of Israel were ; and I did 
my best to point out clearly the difference 
between manna and manners. He listened 
with seeming understanding ; but the next 
day, coming upon me as I was fastening a 
" crimson rambler " to its trellis, he inquired 
solemnly, " Can the roses make children 
have good manners, yet ? " 

Country children are taught, even as sedu- 
lously as city children, the importance of good 
manners ! On the farm, as elsewhere, the 
small left hand is seized in time by a mother 
or an aunt with the well-worn words, " Shake 
hands with the right hand, dear." " If you 
please," as promptly does an elder sister sup- 
plement the little child's " Yes," on the oc- 
casion of an offer of candy from a grown-up 
friend. The proportion of small boys who 
make their bows and of little girls who drop 
80 




A SMALL COUNTRY BOY 



THE COUNTRY CHILD 

their courtesies is much the same in the 
country as it is in the city. 

In the matter of clothes, too, the country 
mother, like any other mother in America, 
wishes her children to be becomingly attired, 
in full accord with such of the prevailing 
fashions as seem to her most suitable. In 
company with the greater portion of Amer- 
ican mothers, she devotes considerable time 
and strength and money to the wardrobes of 
her boys and girls. The result is that country 
children are dressed strikingly like city child- 
ren. Their "everyday "garments are scarcely 
distinguishable from the " play clothes " of 
city children; their "Sunday" clothes are 
very similar to the "best" habiliments of the 
boys and girls who do not live in the 
country. 

We have all read, in the books of our 
grandmothers' childhood, of the children 
who, on the eve of going to visit their city 
cousins, were much exercised concerning their 
wearing apparel. " Would the pink frock, 
with the green sash, he jus f what was being 
worn to parties in the city ? " the little girl of 
8i 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

such story-books fearfully wondered. " Will 
boys of my age be wearing short trousers 
still V^ the small boy dubiously queried. In- 
variably it transpired that pink frocks and 
green sashes, if in fashion at all, were never 
seen at parties; and that long trousers were 
absolutely essential, from the point of view 
of custom, for boys of our heroes age. Many 
woes were attendant upon the discovery that 
these half-suspected sumptuary laws were 
certain facts. 

No present-day country boy and girl, com- 
ing from the average home to the house of city 
cousins, would need to feel any such qualms. 
Should they, five minutes' inspection of the 
garments of those city cousins would relieve 
their latent questionings. They would see 
that, to the casual eye, they and their cousins 
were dressed in the same type of raiment. 

How could they fail to be? A large crop 
of "fashion magazines " flourishes in Amer- 
ica. The rural free delivery brings them to 
the very doors of the farmhouse. By the 
use of mail orders the mother on the farm 
can obtain whatever materials the particular 
82 



THE COUNTRY CHILD 

"fashion magazine" to which she is a sub- 
scriber advises, together with paper patterns 
from which she can cut anything, from 
"jumpers " to a "coat for gala occasions." 

The approved clothes of all American 
children in our time are so exceedingly simple 
in design that any woman who can sew at 
all can construct them ; and, in the main, the 
materials of which they are made are so inex- 
pensive that even the farmer whose income 
is moderate in size can afford to supply them. 
A clergyman who had worked both in city 
and in country parishes once told me that he 
attributed the marked increase in ease and 
grace of manner — and, consequently, in 
"sociability " — among country people to- 
day, as compared with country people of his 
boyhood, very largely to the invention of 
paper patterns. 

" Rural folk dressed in a way peculiar to 
themselves then," he said ; "now they dress 
like the rest of the world. It is curious," 
he went on, reflectively, " but human beings, 
as a whole, seem unable not to be awkward 
in their behavior if their costumes can pos- 

83 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

sibly be differentiated otherwise than by- 
size!" 

It is another queer fact that normal per- 
sons would seem to require " best " clothes. 
They share the spirit of Jess, in " A Window 
in Thrums." " But you could never wear 
yours, though ye had ane," said Hendry to 
her about the "cloak with beads" ; "ye 
would juist hae to lock it awa in the 
drawers." "Aye," Jess retorted, "but I 
would aye ken it was there." 

I have an acquaintance who is not normal 
in this matter. She scorns "finery," whether 
for use or for " locking awa." One summer 
she and I spent a fortnight together on a 
Connecticut farm. During the week the 
farmer and his wife, as well as their two little 
children, a girl and a boy, wore garments 
of dark-colored denim very plainly made. 
The children were barefooted. 

" These people have sense," my acquaint- 
ance observed to me on the first day of our 
sojourn ; " they dress in harmony with their 
environment." 

I was silent, realizingthat, if Sunday were 
84 



THE COUNTRY CHILD 

a fine day, she might feel compelled to mod- 
ify her approbation. On Saturday night the 
farmer asked if we should care to accompany 
the family to church the next morning. Both 
of us accepted the invitation. 

Sunday morning, as I had foreseen, when 
the family assembled to take its places in the 
" three-seater," the father was in " blacks," 
with a " boiled" shirt; the mother, a pretty 
dark-eyed, dark-h aired young woman, a pleas- 
ant picture in the most every-day of gar- 
ments, was a charming sight, in a rose-tinted 
wash silk and a Panama hat trimmed with 
black velvet. As for the boy and the girl, 
they were arrayed in spotless white, from 
their straw hats even to their canvas shoes. 
The hands of the farmer and his son were 
uncovered; but the mother and her little 
daughter wore white lisle gloves. They also 
carried parasols — the mother's of the shade 
of her dress, the girFs pale blue. No family 
in America could possibly have looked more 
"blithe and bonny" than did that one in 
" Sunday " clothes, ready for church. 

The face of my acquaintance was a study. 
85 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

In it were mingled surprise and disapproval. 
Both these elements became more pro- 
nounced when we were fairly in the meeting- 
house. All the men, women, and children 
there assembled were also in " Sunday " 
clothes. 

My acquaintance has the instinct of the 
reformer. Hardly were we settled in the 
" three-seater," preparatory to returning 
home after the service, when she began. 
" Do you make your own clothes ? " she in- 
quired of the farmer's wife. 

" Yes," was the reply ; " and the children's, 
too." 

"Is n't there a great deal of work involved 
in the care of such garments as you are all 
wearing to-day ? " she further pursued. 

" I suppose there is the usual amount," the 
other woman said, dryly. 

" Then, why do you do it — living in the 
country, as you do? " 

*' There is no reason why people should n't 

dress nicely, no matter where they happen 

to live," was the answer. " During the week 

we can't; but on Sunday we can, and do, and 

86 




ARRAYED IN SPOTLESS WHITE 



THE COUNTRY CHILD 

ought — out of respect to the day," she 
quaintly added. 

The city is not a mere name to American 
country children. Increased train facilities, 
the improvement in the character of country 
roads brought about by the advent of the 
automobile, and the extension of the trolley 
system have done much to mitigate the iso- 
lation of rural communities. The farmer and 
his wife can avail themselves of the advan- 
tages to be found in periodical trips to the 
nearest city. Like other American parents, 
they invite their children to share their in- 
terests. The boys and girls are included in 
thejauntings to the city. 

I once said to a little girl whom I met on 
a farm in Massachusetts : "You must come 
soon and stay with me in the city from Sat- 
urday until Monday. We will go to the Art 
Museum and look at the pictures." 

" Oh," she cried, joyously, " I 'd love to ! 
Every time we go to town, and there is a 
chance, mother and I go to the Museum ; 
we both like the pictures so much." 

This little girl, when she was older, desired 

87 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

to become a kindergartner. There was a 
training-school in the near-by city. She 
could not afford to go to and fro on the train, 
but there was a trolley. The journey on the 
trolley occupied three hours, but the girl took 
it twice daily for two years. 

" Does n't it tire you ?" I asked her. 

"Oh, somewhat," she admitted; "but I 
was already used to it. We usually traveled 
to town on it when I was small." 

" Countrified " is not the word to apply 
to American farmers and their families. One 
might as aptly employ it when describing the 
people of England who live on their " landed 
estates." Ignorance and dullness and awk- 
wardness we shall not often find among 
country children. The boys and girls on the 
farms are as well informed, as mentally alert, 
and as attractive as children in any other good 
homes in America. 

We all know Mr. James Whitcomb Riley's 
poem, " Little Cousin Jasper." The country 
boy in it, we recall, concluded his reflections 
upon the happier fortune of the boy from 
the "city" of Rensselaer with these words: 
88 



THE COUNTRY CHILD 

" Wishst our town ain't like it is! — 
Wishst it's ist as big as his! 
Wishst 'at his folks they'd move here. 
An' we ^d move to Rensselaer ! ' ' 

Only last summer I repeated this poem to 
a little girl whose home was a farm not far 
from a house at which I was stopping. 

" But," she said, in a puzzled tone of voice, 
"no place is as big as the country ! Look ! " 
she exclaimed, pointing to the distant hori- 
zon; "it's so big it touches the edge of the 
sky! No city is that big, is it?" 



IV 

THE CHILD IN SCHOOL 

An elderly woman was talking to me not 
long ago about her childhood. 

" No, my dear, I did not have a govern- 
ess,*' she said, in answer to my questionings. 
^' Neither did I attend the public schools, 
though I lived in the city. I went to a priv- 
ate school. The pupils in it were the girls 
of the little social circle to which my pa- 
rents belonged. There were perhaps twenty 
of us in all. And there were three teachers; 
one for the 'first class,' one for the 'second 
class,' and a French-German-music-and- 
drawing-teacher-in-one for both classes." 

"And what did you study ? " I asked. 

" Besides French, German, music, and 
drawing? " my elderly friend mused. " Well, 
we had the three R's ; and history, English 
and American, and geography, and deport- 
ment. I think that was all." 
90 



THE CHILD IN SCHOOL 

" And you liked It ? " I ventured. 

"Yes, my dear, I did/' replied my friend, 
"though I used to pretend that I didn't. 
I sometimes even 'played sick' in order to 
be allowed to stay home from school. Chil- 
dren then, as now, thought they ought to 
'hate to go to school.' I believe mostof them 
did, too. I happened to be a ' smart ' child ; so 
I liked school. I suppose ' smart ' children 
still do." 

A "smart" child! In my mind's eye I 
can see my elderly friend as one, sitting at 
the "head " of her class, on a long, narrow 
bench, her eyes shining with a pleased con- 
sciousness of " knowing " the lesson, her 
cheeks rosy with expectation of the triumph 
sure to follow her "saying" of it, her lips 
parted in an eagerness to begin. Can we not 
all see her, that " smart " child of two gen- 
erations ago ? 

As for her lesson, can we not hear it with 
our mind's ear? In arithmetic, it was the 
multiplication table ; in English history, the 
names of the sovereigns and the dates of 
their reigns ; in geography, the capitals of 
91 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

the world ; in deportment — ah. In deport- 
ment, a finer lesson than any of our schools 
teach now ! These were the lessons. Indeed, 
my elderly friend has told me as much. 
" And not easy lessons, either, my dear, 
nor easily learned, as the lessons of school- 
children seem to be to-day. We had no 
kindergartens ; the idea that lessons were 
play had not come in ; to us lessons were 
work, and hard work." 

My friend gave a little sigh and shook her 
head ever so slightly as she concluded. It 
was plain that she deprecated modern edu- 
cational methods. " Schools have changed," 
she added. 

And has not the attitude of children 
toward going to school changed even more ? 
Do many of them "hate to go"? Do any 
of them at all think they " ought to hate to 
go"? Is a single one "smart" in the old- 
time sense of the word ? 

A winter or two ago I was recovering from 
an illness in a house which, by great good 
fortune, chanced to be situated on a subur- 
ban street corner, not only near a large pub- 
92 



THE CHILD IN SCHOOL 

He school, but directly on the main route of 
the children going to and from it. My chief 
pleasure during that shut-in winter was 
watching those children. Four times a day 

— at half-past eight, at half-past twelve, at 
half-past one, and at half-past three — I 
would take the window to see them going 
by. They were of many ages and sizes ; from 
the kindergarten babies to the boys and girls 
of the ninth grade. None of them could pos- 
sibly have been described as " creeping like 
snail unwillingly to school." As a usual 
thing, they came racing pell-mell down the 
three streets that converged at my corner; 
after school they as tumultuously went rac- 
ing up, homeward. I never needed to con- 
sult the clock in order not to miss seeing 
the children. When I heard from outside 
distant sounds of laughing and shouting, I 
knew that a school session had just ended 

— or was about to begin. Which, I could 
only tell by noting the time. The same joy- 
ous turmoil heralded the one as celebrated 
the other. Clearly, these children, at least, did 
not " hate to go to school " ! 

93 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

One of them, a little boy of nine, a friend 
and near neighbor of mine, liked it so well 
that enforced absence from it constituted a 
punishment for a major trangression. " Is n't 
your boy well?" I inquired of his mother 
when she came to call one evening. " A 
playmate of his who was here this afternoon 
told me that he had not been in school to- 
day." 

" Oh, yes, he is perfectly well ! " my friend 
exclaimed. " But he is being disciplined — " 

" Disciplined ? " I said. " Has he been so 
insubordinate as that in school ? " 

"Not in school," the boy's mother said; 
"at home." Then, seeing my bewilderment, 
she elucidated. " When he is very naughty 
at home, I keep him out of school. It pun- 
ishes him more than anything else, because 
he loves to go to school.'* 

Another aspect of the subject presented 
itself to my mind. " I should think he would 
fall behind in his studies," I commented. 

" Oh, no," she replied ; " he does n't. 
Children don't fall behind in their studies in 
these days," she added. " They don't get a 

94 



THE CHILD IN SCHOOL 

chance. Every single lesson they miss their 
teachers require them to ' make up.' When 
my boy is absent for a day, or even for only 
half a day, his teacher sees that he ^ makes up ' 
the lessons lost before the end of the week. 
When I was a child, and happened to be 
absent, no teacher troubled about my lost 
lessons ! / did all the troubling ! I labori- 
ously ' made them up ' ; the thought of ex- 
amination dayscoming along spurred me on." 

Those examination days ! How amazed, 
almost amused, our child friends are when 
we, of whose school-days they were such 
large and impressive milestones, describe 
them ! A short time ago I was visiting an 
old schoolmate of mine. "Tell me what 
school was like when you and mother went," 
her little girl of ten besought me. 

So I told her. I dwelt upon those aspects 
of it differing most from school as she knows 
it — the "Scholarship Medal," the "Prize 
for Bible History," and the other awards, the 
bestowal of which made " Commencement 
Morning" of each year a festival unequaled, 
to the pupils of " our " school, by any uni- 

95 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

versity commencement in the land, however 
many and brilliant the number of its recipi- 
ents of" honorary degrees." I touched upon 
the ease with which even the least remark- 
able pupil in that school could repeat the 
Declaration of Independence and recount 
the " causes " of the French Revolution. 
Finally, I mentioned our examination days 
— six in January, six more in June. 

" What did you do on them ? " inquired 
the little girl. 

" Will you listen to that ? " demanded her 
mother. "Ten years old — and she asks 
what we did on examination days ! This is 
what it means to belong to the rising genera- 
tion — not to know, at ten, anything about 
examination days ! " 

" What did you do on them ? " the little 
girl persisted. 

"We had examinations," I explained. 
" All our books were taken away, and we 
were given paper and pen and ink — " 

" And three hours for each examination," 
my friend broke in. " We had one in the 
morning and another in the afternoon." 

96 



THE CHILD IN SCHOOL 

"Yes," I went on. "One morning we 
would have a grammar examination. Twenty 
questions would be written on the blackboard 
by our teacher, and we would write the 
answers — in three hours. On another morn- 
ing, or on the afternoon of that same day, 
we might have an arithmetic examination. 
There would be twenty questions, and three 
hours to answer them in, just the same." 

" Do you understand, dear ? " said the little 
girl's mother. " Well, well," she went on, 
turning to me before the child could reply, 
" how this talk brings examination days back 
to my remembrance ! What excitement there 
was ! And how we worked getting ready for 
them ! I really think it was a matter of pride 
with us to be so tired after our last examin- 
ation of the week that we had to go to bed 
and dine on milk toast and a soft-boiled 

egg!" _ 

The little girl was looking at us with round 
eyes. 

" Does it all sound very queer?" I asked. 

" The going to bed does," she made reply ; 
"and the milk toast and the egg for dinner, 

97 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

and the working hard. The examinations 
sound something like the tests we have. 
T^hey are questions to write answers to, but 
we don't think much about them. I don't 
believe any of the girls or boys go to bed 
afterwards, or have milk toast and eggs for 
dinner — on purpose because they have had 
a test ! " 

She was manifestly puzzled. " Perhaps it 
is because we have tests about every two 
weeks, and not just in January and June," 
she suggested. 

She did not seem disposed to investigate 
further the subject of her mother's and my 
school-days. In a few moments she ran off 
to her play. 

When she was quite out of hearing her 
mother burst into a hearty laugh. " Poor 
child 1 " she exclaimed. " She thinks we and 
our school were very curious. I wonder 
why," she continued more seriously, " we 
did take examinations, and lessons, too, so 
weightily. Children don't in these days. 
The school-days of the week are so full of 
holiday spirit for them that, actually, Satur- 

98 



THE CHILD IN SCHOOL 

day is not much of a gala day. Think of what 
Saturday was to us ! What glorious times we 
had ! Why, Saturday was Saturday ^ to us ! 
Do you remember the things we did ? You 
wrote poems and I painted pictures, and we 
read stories, and ^ acted' them. Then, we 
had our gardens in the spring, and our ex- 
periments in cake-baking in the winter. My 
girls do none of these things on Saturday. 
The day is not to them what it was to us. 
I wonder what makes the difference." 

I had often wondered ; but these reflec- 
tions of my old schoolmate gave me an inkling 
of what the main difference is. To us, school 
had been a place in which we learned lessons 
from books — books of arithmetic, books of 
grammar, or other purely academic books. 
For five days of the week our childish minds 
were held to our lessons ; and our lessons, 
without exception, dealt with technicalities 
— parts of speech, laws of mathematics, facts 
of history, definitions of the terms of geogra- 
phy. Small marvel that Saturday was a gala 
day to us. It was the one " week day " when 
we might be unacademic ! 

99 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

But children of the present time have no 
such need of Saturday. They write poems, 
and paint pictures, and read stories, and 
" act " them, and plant gardens, and even 
bake cake, as regular parts of their school 
routine. The schools are no longer solely, 
or even predominantly, academic. As for 
technicalities, where are they in the schools 
of to-day ? As far in the background as the 
teachers can keep them. Children do not 
study grammar now ; they are given " lan- 
guage work." It entails none of the memo- 
rizing of " rules," " exceptions," and " cau- 
tions " that the former study of grammar 
required. History would seem to be learned 
without that sometimelaying hold of "dates." 
Geography has ceased to be a matter of the 
"bounding" of states and the learning of 
the capitals of the various countries ; it has 
become the " story of the earth." And arith- 
metic — it is "number work" now, and is 
all but taught without the multiplication 
tables. How could Saturday be to the chil- 
dren of to-day what it was to the children of 
yesterday ? 

100 



THE CHILD IN SCHOOL 

My old schoolmate's little girl had spoken 
of "tests/* In my school-days we called 
such minor weekly or fortnightly matters as 
these, "reviews." We regarded them quite 
as lightly as my small friend looked upon her 
"tests." Examinations — they were differ- 
ent, indeed. Twice a year we were expected 
to stretch our short memories until they 
neatly covered a series of examination pa- 
pers, each composed of twenty questions, 
relating to fully sixteen weeks' accumulation 
of accurate data on the several subjects — 
fortunately few — we had so academically 
been studying. It is little wonder that chil- 
dren of the present day are not called upon 
to " take " such examinations ; not only the 
manner of their teaching, but the great 
quantity of subjects taught, make " tests " of 
frequent occurrence the only practicable ex- 
aminations. 

" Children of the present time learn about 
so many things ! " sighed a middle-aged friend 
of mine after a visit to the school which her 
small granddaughter attended. "What an 
array of subjects are brought to their notice, 

lOI 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

from love of country to domestic science ! 
How do their young minds hold it? " 

I am rather inclined to think that their 
young minds hold it very much as young 
minds of one, two, or three generations ago 
held it. After all, what subjects are brought 
to the notice of present-day children that 
were not called to the attention of children 
of former times? The difference would 
seem to be, not that the children of to-day 
learn about more things than did the children 
of yesterday, but that they learn about more 
things in school. Love of country — were we 
not all taught that by our fathers as early 
and as well as the children are taught it to- 
day by their teachers? And domestic science 
— did not mothers teach that, not only to 
their girls, but to their boys also, with a de- 
gree of thoroughness not surpassed even by 
that of the best of modern domestic science 
teachers? The subjects to be brought to the 
notice of children appear to be so fixed ; the 
things to be learned by them seem to be so 
slightly alterable ! It is only the place of in- 
struction that has shifted. Such a quantity 

102 



THE CHILD IN SCHOOL 

of things once taught entirely at home are 
now taught partly at school. 

It is the fashion, I know, to deplore this. 
" How dreadful it is," we hear many a per- 
son exclaim, " that things that used to be 
told a child alone at its mother's knee are 
now told whole roomfuls of children together 
in school!" 

Certainly it would be " dreadful " should 
the fact that children are taught anything in 
school become a reason to parents for ceas- 
ing to teach them that same thing at home. 
So long as this does not happen, ought we 
not to rejoice that children are given the op- 
portunity of hearing in company from their 
teachers what they have already heard sep- 
arately from their fathers and mothers ? A 
boy or a girl who has heard from a father or 
a mother, in intimate personal talk, of the 
beauty of truth, the beauty of purity, the 
beauty of kindness, is fortified in an endeavor 
to hold fast to these things by hearing a 
teacher speak of them in a public, impersonal 
way. 

Indeed, is not this unity between the home 
103 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

and the school the great and unique fact in 
the education of the children of the present 
time ? They are taught at home, as children 
always have been, and doubtless always will 
be, an " array of subjects " ; and they are 
taught at school, as children perhaps never 
before were, other aspects of very nearly all 
the matters touched upon in that " array." 
My old schoolmate said that Saturday had 
lost the glory it wore in her school-days and 
mine; but it seems to me that what has ac- 
tually occurred is that the five school-days of 
the week have taken on the same glory. The 
joys we had only on Saturday children have 
now on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, 
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday ! 

It is inevitable, I suppose, that they should 
handle our old delights with rather a profes- 
sional grasp. One day recently a little girl, a 
new acquaintance, came to see me. I brought 
out various toys, left over from my child- 
hood, for her amusement — a doll, with 
the trunk that still contained her wardrobe ; 
an autograph album, with " verses " and 
sketches in it; and a "joining map," such 
104 




THEY DO SO MANY THINGS! 



THE CHILD IN SCHOOL 

as the brother of Rosamond of the Purple 
Jar owned. 

My small caller occupied herself with 
these for a flattering length of time, then she 
said : " You played with these — what else 
did you play with ? '' 

" I made paper-boats/* I replied ; " and 
sailed them. I will show you how/' I 
added. 

She watched me with interest while I 
folded and refolded a sheet of writing-paper 
until it became a boat. 

"There ! " I said, handing it to her. 

" Have you any more paper you can 
spare ? " she questioned. 

" Of course," I said. " Should you like 
me to make you more boats? " 

" I '11 make some things for you^^ she re- 
marked, "if you will let me have the paper." 

I offered her the freedom of the writing- 
paper drawer ; and, while I looked on, she 
folded and refolded with a practiced hand, 
until the table beside us was covered, not 
only with boats compared with which mine 
was as a dory to an ocean liner, but also with 
105 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

a score of other pretty and somewhat intri- 
cate paper toys. 

"Who taught you to make all these 
lovely things?" I asked. 

" My teacher," answered the small girl. 
" We all do it, in my room at school, every 
Friday." 

They do so many things ! Their grown- 
up friends are hard put to it to find anything 
novel to do with, or for, them. Not long ago 
a little boy friend of mine was ill with scarlet 
fever. His " case " was so light that the main 
problem attached to it was that of providing 
occupation for the child during the six weeks 
of quarantine in one room. Remembering 
the pleasure I had taken as a child in plant- 
ing seeds on cotton in a glass of water and 
watching them grow at a rate almost equal to 
that of Jack's beanstalk, I made a similar 
"little garden" and sent it to the small 
boy. 

"It was lots of fun, having it," he said, 
when, quite well, he came to see me. "It 
grew so fast — faster than the others," 

" What others ? " I queried. 
io6 



THE CHILD IN SCHOOL 

"At school," he explained. "We have 
them at school ; and they grow fast, but the 
one you gave me grew faster. Was that be- 
cause it was in a little glass instead of a big 
bowl ? " 

I could not tell him. We had not had 
them at school in my school-days in a big 
bowl. They had been out-of-school inci- 
dents, cultivated only in little glasses. 

They have so many things at school, the 
children of to-day ! If many of these things 
have been taken from the home, they have 
only been taken that they may, as it were, be 
carried back and forth between the home and 
the school. 

I have a friend, the mother of an only 
child, a boy of eight. Her husband's work 
requires that the family live in a section of 
the city largely populated by immigrants. 
The one school in the vicinity is a large 
public school. When my friend's little boy 
reached the " school age," he, perforce, was 
entered at this school. 

" You are an American," his father said 
to him the day before school opened; "not 
107 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

a foreigner, like almost every child you will 
find at school. Remember that." 

" He does n't understand what you mean 
when you talk to him about being an Ameri- 
can," the boy's mother said the next morn- 
ing as we all watched the child run across the 
street to the school. " How could he, living 
among foreigners ? " 

One day, about two months later, the 
small boy's birthday being near at hand, his 
father said to him, " If some one were plan- 
ning to give you something, what should you 
choose to have it?" 

" A flag," the boy said instantly ; " an 
American flag ! Our flag ! " 

" Why ? " the father asked, almost invol- 
untarily. 

" To salute," the child replied. " I Ve 
learned how in school — what to say and 
what to do. Americans do it when they 
love their country — like you told me to," 
he added, eagerly. "Our teacher says so. 
She 's taught us all how to salute the flag. 
I told her I was an American, not a for- 
eigner like the other children. And she said 
io8 



THE CHILD IN SCHOOL 

they could be Americans, too, if they wanted 
to learn how. So they are going to." 

The small boy got his flag. The patriotism 
taught at home and the patriotism taught at 
school, diverse at other points, met and min- 
gled at that one most fundamental point. 

In former days children did not quote their 
teachers much at home, nor their parents 
much at school. They do both in these days ; 
occasionally with comic results. A little girl 
of my acquaintance whose first year at school 
began less than a month ago has, I observed 
only yesterday, seemed to learn as her in- 
troductory lesson to pronounce the words 
"either " and " neither" quite unmistakably 
" ather " and " nather." 

" This is an amazing innovation," I said to 
her mother. "How did she ever happen to 
think of it?" 

" Ask her," said her mother plaintively. 

I did inquire of the little girl. " Whom have 
you heard say ^ ather' and *nather'?" 

" Nobody," she unexpectedly answered. 

" Then how did you learn to say it? " 

" Uncle Billy told me to—" 
109 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

This uncle is an instructor of English in 
one of our most famous colleges. " My dear 
child," I protested, " you must have misun- 
derstood him ! " 

"Oh, no," she affirmed earnestly. "You 
see, papa and mamma say 'eether* and 
'neether,' and my school-teacher says 'eye- 
ther ' and ' nyether.' I told papa and mamma, 
and they said to say them the way my teacher 
did; and I told my teacher, and she said to 
say them the way papa and mamma did! I 
could n't say them two ways at once; and I 
did n't know which one way to say them. So 
Uncle Billy told me, if he were doing it, he 
wouldn't worry about it; i?^ would say them 
'ather'and'nather'!" 

She is a very little girl, only seven ; and 
she has not yet rounded out her first month 
of school. I suppose before she has been 
in school a full term she will have discovered 
the impracticability of her uncle's method of 
settling the vexed question as to the pronun- 
ciation of " either " and " neither." Very 
likely she will decide to say them " eyether " 
and " nyether," as her teacher does, 
no 



THE CHILD IN SCHOOL 

It takes the children so short a time to 
elevate the teacher to the rank of final arbi- 
ter in their intellectual world. So soon, they 
follow her footsteps in preference to any 
others along the ways of education. Not 
only do they pronounce words as she pro- 
nounces them ; in so far as they are able, 
they define words as she defines them. In 
due course, they are a bit fearful of any 
knowledge obtained otherwise than as she 
teaches them to obtain it. Is there one of 
us who has attempted to help a child with 
"home lessons" who has not been obliged 
to reckon with this fact? Have we not 
worked out a problem in " bank discount," 
for instance, for a perplexed youthful mathe- 
matician, only to be told, hesitatingly, " Ye-es, 
you have got the right answer, but that is n't 
the way my teacher does bank discount. 
Don't you know how to do it as she does ? " 
Or, with a young Latin "beginner" in the 
house, have we not tried to bring order out of 
chaos with respect to the"Bellum Gallicum" 
by translating, "All Gaul is divided into three 
parts," to be at once interrupted by, " Our 
III 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

teacher translates that, * Gaul is, as a whole, 
divided into three parts/ " If we would 
assist the children of our immediate circles at 
all with their " home lessons," we must do it 
exactly after the manner and method ordained 
by their teachers. 

This condition of things ought not to be 
displeasing to us, for the reason that, in the 
main, we have ourselves brought it to pass. 
The children, during their first days at school, 
are loyally ready to force the views of their 
fathers and their mothers, and their uncles 
and aunts, upon their teachers ; and their 
teachers are tactfully ready to effect a com- 
promise with them. But, before very long, 
our reiterated, " Your teacher knows ; do as 
she says," has its effect. The teacher be- 
comes the child's touchstone in relation to a 
considerable number of the " array of sub- 
jects " taught in a present-day school. School- 
teachers in America prepare themselves so 
carefully for their duties, train themselves 
to such a high order of skill in their perform- 
ance, it is but just that those of us who are 
not teachers should abdicate in their favor. 

112 



THE CHILD IN SCHOOL 

However, since we are all very apt to be 
in entire accord with the children's teachers 
in all really vital matters, our position of sec- 
ond place in the minds of the boys and girls 
with regard to the ways of doing "bank 
discount " or translating " Gallia est omnes 
divisa in partes tres'' is of small account. 
At least, we have a fuller knowledge of their 
own relations with these mathematical and 
Latinic things than our grandparents had 
of our parents' lessons. And the children's 
teachers know more about our relations to 
the subjects taught than the teachers of our 
fathers and mothers knew respecting the 
attitudes of our grandfathers and grand- 
mothers toward the curriculum of that earlier 
time. For the children of to-day, unlike 
the children of a former time, talk at home 
about school and talk at school about home. 
Almost unconsciously, this effects an increas- 
ingly cooperative union between home and 
school. 

" We are learning ^ Paul Revere's Ride,' 
in school," I heard a small girl who lives in 
Boston say recently to her mother. 

113 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

" Are youj darling ? '* the mother replied. 
" Then, should n't you like to go some Satur- 
day and see the church where the lanterns 
were hung ? " 

So much did the child think she would 
like to go that her mother took her the next 
Saturday. 

" You saw the very steeple at which Paul 
Revere looked that night for the lanterns ! " 
I said, when, somewhat later, I happened to 
be again at that child's home. 

" Twice," she replied. " I told my teacher 
that mother had taken me, so she took all 
of us in my room at school on the next Sat- 
urday." 

Perhaps the most significant influence of 
the American home upon the American 
school is to be found in the regular setting 
apart of an hour of the school-day once, or 
twice, or even three times a week, as a story 
hour; and the filling of that hour with the 
stories, read or told, that in earlier times chil- 
dren never so much as heard mentioned at 
school by their teachers. It is indeed a pleas- 
ant thought that in school-rooms through- 
114 



THE CHILD IN SCHOOL 

out the land boys and girls are hearing about 
the Argonauts, and the Knights of the Round 
Table, and the Crusaders ; to say nothing of 
such famous personages in the story world 
as Cinderella, and the Sleeping Beauty, and 
Hop-0*-My-Thumb. The home story hour 
is no less dear because there is a school story 
hour too. 

The other afternoon I stopped in during 
the story hour to visit a room in the school 
of my neighborhood. The teacher told the 
story of Pandora and the tale of Theseus and 
the Minotaur. A small friend of mine is a 
member of the " grade *' which occupies that 
room. At the end of the session she walked 
home with me. 

"Tell me a story?** she asked, when, 
sitting cozily by the fire, we were having 
tea. 

"What one should you like ? " I inquired. 
" The story of Clytie, perhaps, or — " 

" I *d like to hear the one about Pan- 
dora— " 

" But you have just heard it at school ! " 
I exclaimed. 

"5 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

" I know," she said ; " but I 'd like to hear 
you tell it." 

When I had told it, she begged me to tell 
another. Again I suggested various tales in 
my repertory. But she refused them all. 
"Tell about the man, and the dragon, and 
the ball of string, and the lady — " she 
began. 

And once more when I interposed, re- 
minding her that she had just heard it, she 
once more said, "Yes ; but I 'd like to hear it 
again." 

Some of the children whom I have in mind 
as I write go to private schools and some of 
them go to public schools. It has not seemed 
to me that the results obtained by the one 
type of school are discernibly different from 
those produced by the other. In the private 
school there are fewer pupils than in the 
public school ; and they are more nearly alike 
from the point of view of their parents' ma- 
terial wealth than are the pupils in a public 
school. They are also "Americans," and not 
"foreigners," as are so many of the children 
in city public schools, and even in the pub- 
116 




THEY HAVE SO MANY THINGS! 



THE CHILD IN SCHOOL 

lie schools of many suburbs and villages. 
Possibly owing to their smaller numbers, 
they receive more individual attention than 
the pupils of the public school; but, so far as 
my rather extensive and intimate acquaint- 
ance with children qualifies me to judge, 
they learn the same lessons, and learn them 
with equal thoroughness. We hear a great 
deal about the differences between public 
and private schools, and certainly there are 
differences; but the pupils of the public and 
the private schools are very much alike. It 
is considerably easier to distinguish a public 
from a private school than it is to tell a pub- 
lic-school child from a private-school child. 
There are many arraignments of our 
American schools, whether public or priv- 
ate ; and there are many persons who shake 
their heads over our American school-chil- 
dren. " The schools are mere drilling-places," 
we hear, "where the children are all put 
through the same steps." And the children 
— what do we hear said of them ? " They 
do not work at their lessons as children of 
one, two, or three generations ago did," is 
117 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

the cry; "school is made so pleasant for 
them!" 

Unquestionably our American schools and 
our American school-children have their 
faults. We must try to amend both. Mean- 
while, shall we not be grateful that the 
" steps" through which the children are put 
are such excellent ones ; and shall we not 
rejoice that school is made so " pleasant ** 
for the boys and girls that, unlike the chil- 
dren of one, two, or three generations ago, 
they like to go to school? 



THE CHILD IN THE LIBRARY 

One day, not long ago, a neighbor of 
Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, of 
honored memory, was talking to me about 
him. Among the score of charming anec- 
dotes of the dear Colonel that she told me, 
there was one, the most delightful of all, that 
related to the time-worn subject of the child 
in the library. " As a family, we were read- 
ers," she said. "The importance of reading 
had been impressed upon our minds from our 
earliest youth. All of us liked to read, ex- 
cepting one sister, younger than I. She cared 
little for it ; and she seldom did it. I was a 
mere child, but so earnestly had I always been 
told that children who did not read would 
grow up ignorant that I worried greatly over 
my sister who would not read. At last I un- 
burdened my troubled mind to Colonel Hig- 
ginson. ' She does n*t like to read ; she 
119 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

does n't read/ I confided. ' I am afraid she 
will grow up ignorant ; and then she will be 
ashamed ! And think how we shall feel ! ' 
The Colonel considered my words in silence 
for a time. Then he said : ' There is a large 
and finely selected library in your house ; 
don't be disturbed regarding your sister, my 
dear. She will not grow up ignorant. You 
see, she is exposed to books ! She is certain 
to get something of what is in them ! ' " 

Colonel Higginson's neighbor went on to 
say that from that day she was no longer 
haunted by the fear that her sister, because 
she did not read, would grow up ignorant. 
Are many of us in that same condition of feel- 
ing with respect to the children of our ac- 
quaintance, even after we have provided them 
with as excellent a library as had that other 
child in which they may be "exposed to 
books " ? On the contrary, so solicitous are 
we that, having furnished to the best of our 
knowledge the best books, we do not rest 
until we are reasonably sure that the chil- 
dren are, not simply getting something from 
them, but getting it at the right times and in 

120 



THE CHILD IN THE LIBRARY 

the right ways. And everything and every 
one conspires to help us. Publishers issue 
volumes by the dozen with such titles as 
" The Children's Reading " and " A Guide 
to Good Reading " and " Golden Books for 
Children." The librarian of the "children's 
room " in many a library sets apart a cer- 
tain hour of each week or each month for 
the purpose of telling the children stories 
from the books that we are all agreed the 
children should read, hoping by this means 
to inspire the boys and girls to read the par- 
ticular books for themselves. No effort is 
regarded as too great if, through it, the chil- 
dren seem likely to acquire the habit of using 
books ; using them for work, and using them 
for recreation. 

Certainly our labors in this direction on 
behalf of the children are amply rewarded. 
Not only are American children of the pre- 
sent time fond of reading — most children 
of other times have been that ; they have a 
quite remarkable skill and ease in the use of 
books. 

A short while ago, spending a spring week- 

121 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

end with a friend who lives in the country, I 
chanced to see a brilhant scarlet bird which 
neither my hostess nor I could identify. " It 
was a redbird, I suppose/' I said, in men- 
tioning it later to a city acquaintance. 

" What is a redbird ? " she asked. " Is it 
a cardinal, or a tanager, or something still 
different ? " 

"I don't know," I replied. "Perhaps," 
I added, turning to her little girl often who 
was in the room, ^'^ you know; children learn 
so much about birds in their ' nature study.' " 

" No," the child answered ; " but," she 
supplemented confidently, " I can find out." 

Several days afterward she came to call. 
" Do you remember exactly the way that red 
bird you saw in the country looked ? " she 
inquired, almost as soon as we met. 

"Just red, I think," I said. 

" Not with black wings ? " she suggested. 

" I hardly think so," I answered. 

" P'aps it had a few white feathers in its 
wings?" she hinted. 

" I believe not," I said. 

" Then," she observed, with an air of 

122 



THE CHILD IN THE LIBRARY 

finality, " it was a cardinal grosbeak ; and 
the other name for that is redbird ; so you 
saw a redbird. The scarlet tanager is red, 
too, but it has black wings, and it is n*t called 
a redbird ; and the crossbill is red, with a few 
white feathers, and // is n't called a redbird 
either. Only the cardinal grosbeak is. That 
was what you saw," she repeated. 

" And who told you all this ? " I queried. 

" Nobody," the little girl made reply. " I 
looked it up in the library." 

She was only ten. " How did you look 
it up ? " I found myself asking. 

" First," she explained," I picked out the 
birds on the bird charts that were red. The 
charts told their names. Then I got out a 
bird book, and looked till I found where it 
told about those birds." 

" Do you look up many things in the li- 
brary ? " I questioned. 

" Oh, yes," the child replied. 

" And do you always find them ? " I con- 
tinued. 

" Not always by myself," she confessed. 
" Everything is n't as easy to look up as 
123 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

birds. But when I can't, there is always the 
librarian, and she helps ; and when she is 
helping, *most anything gets found ! " 

The public library of my small friend's 
city, not being the library I habitually used, 
was only slightly familiar to me. Not long 
after I had been so earnestly assured that 
the scarlet bird I had seen was a redbird, I 
made occasion to go to the library in which 
the information had been gathered. It was 
such a public library as may be seen in very 
nearly every small city in the United States. 
Built of stone ; lighted and heated according 
to the most approved modern methods ; 
divided into "stack-rooms" and "reading- 
rooms" and "receiving-rooms" — it was 
that "typical American library " of which 
we are, as we should be, so proud. I did not 
ask to be directed to the " children's room " ; 
I simply followed a group of children who 
had come into the building with me. 

The "children's room," too, was "typi- 
cal." It was a large, sunny place, furnished 
with low bookcases, small tables, and chairs. 
Around two walls, above the shelves, were 
124 



THE CHILD IN THE LIBRARY 

pictures of famous authors, and celebrated 
scenes likely to be known to children. At 
one end of the room the bird charts of 
which I had so interestingly heard were 
posted, together with flower charts and 
animal charts, of which I had not been 
told. At the other end was the desk of 
the librarian, who so helped young investi- 
gators that, when she helped, anything got 
found. 

I seated myself at the little table nearest 
her desk. She smiled, but she said nothing. 
Neither did I say anything. The time of 
day was just after school; the librarian was 
too much occupied to talk to a stray visitor. 
I remained for fully an hour ; and during 
that hour a steady stream of children passed 
in and out of the room. Some of them se- 
lected books, and, having obtained them, 
departed; others stayed to read, and others 
walked softly about, examining the pictures 
and charts. All of them, whatever their va- 
rious reasons for coming to the library, be- 
gan or ended their visits in conference with 
the librarian. They spoke just above a whis- 

X25 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

per, as befitted the place, but I was near 
enough to hear all that was said. 

" We want to give a play at school the 
last day before Christmas vacation/' said one 
small girl; "is there a good one here? " 

The librarian promptly recommended and 
put into the child's hands a little volume en- 
titled " Fairy Tales a Child Can Read and 
Act." 

A boy, entering rather hurriedly, asked, 
" Could I have a book that tells how to make 
a wireless set — and have it quick, so I can 
begin to-day before dark?" 

It was not a moment before the librarian 
found for him a book called " Wireless Tel- 
egraphy for Amateurs and Students." 

Another boy, less on pleasure bent, peti- 
tioned for a " book about Abraham Lincoln 
that will tell things to put in a composition 
on him." And a girl, at whose school no 
Christmas play was apparently to be given, 
asked for " a piece of poetry to say at school 
just before Christmas." For these two, as 
for all who preceded or followed them, the 
librarian had help. 

126 









Hh '^ 


/ 




Lj 


J 


^11 1 



THE STORY HOUR IN THE CHILDREN S ROOM 



THE CHILD IN THE LIBRARY 

" How wonderful, how unique ! " ex- 
claimed an Italian friend to whom I related 
the experiences of that afternoon hour in the 
" children's room " in the Hbrary of that 
small city. 

But it seems to me that the wonderful 
thing about it is that it is not unique; that 
in almost any "children's room" in almost 
any public library in America practically the 
same condition prevails. Not only are "chil- 
dren's rooms " of a very fine order to be found 
in great numbers ; but children's librarians, as 
sympathetic and as capable as the librarian of 
my small friend's library, in as great numbers, 
are in charge of those rooms. So recognized 
a profession has theirs come to be that, con- 
nected with one of the most prominent li- 
braries in the country, there is a " School for 
Children's Librarians." 

The " children's librarians " do not stop at 
assisting them in choosing books. The story 
hour has come to be as important in the 
"children's rooms " as it is now in the school, 
as it has always been in the home. Telling 
stories to children has grown to be an art ; 
127 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

there is more than one text-book laying down 
its "principles and laws/' Many a librarian 
is also an accomplished story-teller, and in an 
increasing number of libraries there is a story 
hour in the "children's rooms." Beyond 
question, we in America have taken every 
care that our public libraries shall mean some- 
thing more to the boys and girls than places 
in which they are merely " exposed to books." 
American children read ; it is doubtful 
whether any other children in the world read 
so much or so intelligently. In our public 
libraries we plan with such completeness for 
their reading that they can scarcely escape 
becoming readers! At home we keep con- 
stantly in mind the great importance of in- 
culcating in them a love of books and a 
wontedness in their use. To so many of their 
questionings we reply by advising, " Get a 
book about it from the library." So many of 
the fundamental lessons of life we first bring 
to their attention by putting into their hands 
books treating of those lessons written by 
experts — written, moreover, expressly for 
parents to give to their boys and girls to read. 
128 



THE CHILD IN THE LIBRARY 

A few days ago I received a letter from a 
mother saying : " Do you know of a book 
on hygiene that I can give to my children to 
read — a book on that subj ect /or children?*' 

Within reach of my hand I had such a 
book, entitled "The Child's Day," a simply, 
but scientifically, written little volume, telling 
children what to do from the hour of rising 
until the hour of retiring, in order to keep 
well and strong, able to do good work at 
school, and to enjoy as good play after school. 
It was a book that a child not only could read 
with profit, but would read with pleasure. 

At about the same time a father said to 
me: "Is there any book written for children 
about good citizenship — a sort of primer 
of civics, I mean? I require something of 
that kind for my boy." 

A book to meet that particular need, too, 
was on my book-shelves. " Lessons for Jun- 
ior Citizens," it is called. In the clearest, and 
also the most charming, form it tells the 
boys and girls about the government, na- 
tional and local, of their country, and teaches 
them their relation to that government. 
129 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

It is safe to say that there is practically 
no subject so mature that it is not now the 
theme of a book, or a score of books, written 
especially for children. Every one of the 
numerous publishing houses in the United 
States issues yearly as many good volumes 
of this particular type as are submitted. A 
century ago a new writer was most likely to 
win the interest of a publisher by sending him 
a manuscript subtitled, "A Novel." At the 
present time a beginner can more quickly 
awaken the interest of a publisher by sub- 
mitting a manuscript the title of which con- 
tains the words, "For Children." 

"Authors* editions" of books we have 
long had offered us by publishers ; " editions 
de luxe,'' too ; and " limited editions of fifty 
copies, each copy numbered." These are all 
old in the world of books. What is new, 
indeed, is the " children's edition." We 
have it in many shapes, from " Dickens for 
Children" to "The Children's Longfellow." 
These volumes find their way into the "chil- 
dren's rooms "of all our public libraries ; and, 
quite as surely, they help to fill the "chil- 
130 



THE CHILD IN THE LIBRARY 

dren*s bookcases" in the private libraries to 
be found in a large proportion of American 
homes. For no public library can take the 
place in the lives of the children of a private 
library made up of their "very own '' books. 
The public Hbrary may, however, often have 
a predominant share in determining the 
selection of those "very own" books. The 
children wish to possess such books as they 
have read in the " children's room." 

Sometimes a child has still another similar 
reason for wishing to own a certain book. 
Only the other day I had a letter from a boy 
to whom I had sent a copy of "The Story of 
a Bad Boy." "I am glad to have it," he said. 
" The hbrary has it, and father has it. I like 
to have what the library and father have." 

Parents buy books for their children in 
very much the proportions that parents 
bought them before the land was dotted with 
public libraries. Indeed, they buy books in 
larger proportions, for the reason that there 
are so many more books to be bought ! 
The problem of the modern father or mother 
is not, as it once was, to discover a volume 
131 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

likely to interest the children ; but, from 
among the countless volumes offered for 
sale, all certain to interest the children, to 
choose one, two, or three that seem most 
excellent where all are so good. A mother 
of a few generations ago whose small boy- 
was eager to read tales of chivalry simply 
gave him " Le Morte D'Arthur " ; there was 
no " children's edition " of it, no " Boy's 
King Arthur," no " Tales of the Round 
Table." The father whose little girl desired 
to read for herself the stories of Greece he 
had told her put into her hands Bulfinch's 
" Age of Fable " ; he could not, as can 
fathers to-day, give her Kingsley's rendering, 
or Hawthorne's, or Miss Josephine Pres- 
ton Peabody's. Like the father of Aurora 
Leigh,— 

** He wrapt his little daughter in his large 
Man's doublet, careless did it fit or no.** 

At the present time we do not often see 

a child wrapped in a large man's doublet of a 

book ; even more seldom do we see a father 

careless if it fit or no. What we plainly be- 

132 



THE CHILD IN THE LIBRARY 

hold is that doublet, cut down, and most 
painstakingly fitted to the child's little 
mind. 

Unquestionably the children lose some- 
thing by this. The great books of the world 
do not lend themselv^es well to making over. 
" Tales from Shakespeare " are apt to leave 
out Shakespeare's genius, and "Stories from 
Homer" are not Homer. In cutting the 
doublet to fit, the most precious part of the 
fabric is in danger of being sacrificed. 

But whatever the children lose when they 
are small, they find again when they come to 
a larger growth. Most significant of all, when 
they find it, they recognize it. A little girl who 
is a friend of mine had read Lambs' " Tales." 
The book had been given to her when she 
was eight years old. She is nine now. One 
day, not long ago, she was lingering before my 
bookcases, taking out and glancing through 
various volumes. Suddenly she came run- 
ning to me, a copy of "As You Like It" in 
her hand. " This story is in one of my books ! " 
she cried. 

"Yes," I said; "your book was written 
133 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

from this book, and some of those other little 
red books there with it in the bookcase." 

The child went back to the bookcase. She 
took down all the other volumes of Shake- 
speare, and, sitting on the rug with them, she 
spent an utterly absorbed hour in turning 
over their leaves. Finally she scrambled to 
her feet and set the books back in their 
places. " I Ve found which stories in these 
books are in my book, too," she remarked. 
" Mine are easier to read," she added ; "but 
yours have lovely talk in them! " 

Had she not read Lambs' " Tales " at eight 
I am notcertain she would have ventured into 
the wide realms of Shakespeare at nine, and 
tarried there long enough to discover that in 
those realms there is " lovely talk." 

Occasionally, to be sure, the children in- 
sist upon books being easy to read, and refuse 
to find " lovely talk" in them if they are not. 
It was only a short time ago that I read to 
a little boy Browning's " Pied Piper of 
Hamelin." When I had finished there was 
a silence. " Do you like it ? " I inquired. 

" Ye-es," replied my small friend; "it's a 

134 



THE CHILD IN THE LIBRARY 

nice story, but it *s nicer in my book than in 
yours. I '11 bring it next time I come, so you 
can read it." 

He did. The story was told in prose. It 
began, "There was once a town, named 
Hamelin, and there were so many rats in it 
that the people did not know what to do." 
Certainly this is " easier to read " than the 
forty-two lines which the poem uses to make 
an identical statement regarding the town 
named Hamelin. My little friend is only six. 
I hope that by the time he is twelve he will 
think the poem is as " nice " as, if not " nicer" 
than, the story in his book. At least he may 
be impelled by the memory of his pleasure 
in his book to turn to my book and compare 
the two versions of the tale. 

The children of to-day, like the children 
of former days, read because they find in 
books such stuff as dreams are made of; 
and, in common with the children of all 
times, they must needs make dreams. Like 
the boys and girls of most eras, they desire 
to make also other, more temporal, things. 
To aid them in this there are books in 

135 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

quantities and of qualities not even imag- 
ined by the children of a few generations 
ago. The book the title of which begins 
with the words " How to Make " is perhaps 
the most distinctive product of the present- 
day publishing house. No other type of 
book can so effectively win to a love for read- 
ing a child who seems indifferent to books; 
who, as a boy friend of mine used to say, 
" would rather hammer in nails than read." 
The " How to Make " books tell such a 
boy how to hammer in nails to some pur- 
pose. I happened to see recently a volume 
called "Boys' Make-at-Home Things." 
With much curiosity I turned its pages, — 
pages illustrated with pictures of the make- 
at-home things of the title, — glancing at 
directions for constructing a weather-vane, a 
tent, a sled, and a multitude of smaller arti- 
cles. I thought of my boy friend. " Do you 
think he would care to have the book ? " I 
inquired pf his mother over the telephone. 
" Well, I wish he would care to have any 
book ! " she replied. " If you want to try 
this one — " She left the sentence unfin- 



THE CHILD IN THE LIBRARY 

ishedj unless a sigh may be regarded as a 
conclusion. 

I did try the book. "This will tell you 
how to have fun with your tools,'* I wrote, 
when I sent it to the boy. 

Except for a laconic note of thanks, I 
heard nothing from my young friend about 
the book. One day last week I chanced to 
see his mother. "What do you think I am 
doing this afternoon ? " she said. " I am get- 
ting a hook for my son, at his own request ! 
He is engrossed in that book you sent him. 
He is making some of the things described 
in it. But he wants to make something not 
mentioned in it, and he actually asked me to 
see if I could find a book that told how ! " 

" So he likes books better now? " I com- 
mented. 

" Well — I asked him if he did," said the 
boy's mother ; "and he said he did n't like 
' hooky ' books any better, but he liked this 
kind, and always would have, if he 'd known 
about them ! '* 

Whether my boy friend will learn early to 
love " booky " books is a bit doubtful per- 

137 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

haps ; certainly, however, he has found a 
companion in one kind of book. He has 
made the discovery quickly, too ; for he has 
had "Boys' Make-at-Home Things" less 
than a month. 

It was an easy matter for that boy's mo- 
ther to get for her son the particular book he 
desired. She lives in a city ; at least three 
large public libraries are open to her. As for 
book-shops, there are more within her reach 
than she could possibly visit in the course 
of a week, much less in an afternoon. 

The mothers who live in the country can- 
not so conveniently secure the books their 
boys and girls may wish or need. I know 
one woman, the mother of two boys, living 
in the country, who has to exercise consider- 
able ingenuity to provide her sons with books 
of the " How to Make " kind. There is no 
public library within available distance of the 
farmhouse which is her home, and she and 
her husband cannot afford to buy many 
books for their children. The boys, more- 
over, like so great a variety of books that, in 
order to please them, it is not necessary to 

138 



THE CHILD IN THE LIBRARY 

select a book that is not " booky." Their 
parents are lovers of great literature. " I can- 
not bring myself to buy a book about how 
to make an aeroplane, for instance," their 
mother said to me one day, "when there are 
so many wonderful books they have not read, 
and would enjoy reading ! Since I must limit 
my purchase of books, I really think I ought 
to choose only the real books for the boys ; 
and yet they want to make things with their 
hands, like other boys, and there is no way 
to teach them how except through books. 
My husband has no time for it, and there is 
no one else to show them." 

The next summer I went to spend a few 
days with my friend in the country. The 
morning after my arrival her boys proposed 
to take me " over the place." At the lower 
edge of the garden, to which we presently 
came, there was a little brook. Across it was 
a bridge. It was plainly to be seen that this 
bridge was the work of the boys. "How 
very nice it is ! " I remarked. 

" We made it," the older of the boys in- 
stantly replied. 

139 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

" Who showed you how ? " I queried, 
wondering, as I spoke, if my friend had, 
after all, changed her mind with respect 
to the selection of books for her children, 
and chosen one "How to Make" vol- 
ume. 

" It told how in a book," the younger boy 
said; " a Latin book father studied out of 
when he was a boy. There was a picture of 
the bridge ; and on the pages in the back 
of the book the way to make it was all writ- 
ten out in English — father had done it when 
he was in school. It was a long time before 
we could quite see how to doit; but mother 
helped, and the picture showed how, and 
father thought we could do it if we kept at 
it. And it is really a good bridge — you can 
walk across on it." 

When the boys and I returned to the 
house my friend greeted me with a merry 
smile. As soon as we were alone she ex- 
claimed, " I have so wanted to write to you 
about our bridge, patterned on Cassar's ! But 
the boys are so proud of it, they like to 
* surprise ' people with it — not because it is 
140 




THE CHILDREN S EDITION 



THE CHILD IN THE LIBRARY 

like a bridge Caesar made, but because it is 
a bridge they have made themselves ! " 

Another friend of mine, the mother of a 
little girl, has had a different problem, cen- 
tring around the necessity of books for chil- 
dren, to solve. She, too, lives in the country, 
and her little girl is a pupil at the neighbor- 
ing district school. During a visit in the city 
home of a cousin the small girl had been a 
spectator at the city child's "school play," 
which happened to consist of scenes from "A 
Midsummer-Night's Dream." When she 
returned home, she wished to have such an 
entertainment in her school. " Dearest," her 
mother said, "we have no books of plays 
children could act." 

"Couldn't we do the one they did at 
Cousin Rose's school ? " was the next query. 
"Papa says we have thatT 

" I am afraid not," her mother demurred. 
" Ask your teacher." 

The child approached her teacher on the 

subject. "No," the teacher said decisively. 

" ' A Midsummer-Night's Dream ' is too long 

and too hard. Read it, and you'll see. But," 

141 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

she sagely added, " if you can find anything 
that is suitable, and can persuade the other 
children to act in it, I will help you all I can." 

That evening, at home, the little girl 
read "A Midsummer-Night's Dream." 
"Mamma," she suddenly cried, as she neared 
the end, "my teacher says this is too long 
and too hard for us children to do. But we 
could do the play that the people in it do — 
don't you think? It is very short, and all the 
children will like it because it is about poor 
Pyramus and Thisbe, that we have all read 
about in school. It is tit just the same as the 
way it was in the story we read ; but it is about 
them — and the wall, and the lion, and every- 
thing ! Don't you think we could do it ? 
They did the fairy part when I saw it at 
Cousin Rose's school, and not this at all. But 
could n't we ? " 

"I did not like to discourage her," my 
friend said when she related the tale to me. 
" All the other children were willing and eager 
to do it, so her teacher could n't refuse, after 
what she had said, to help them. I helped 
with the rehearsals, too, and I doubt if the 
142 



THE CHILD IN THE LIBRARY 

teacher or I ever laughed so much in all our 
lives as we did at that time — when there 
were no children about ! The children were so 
sweet and serious over their play ! They acted 
it as they would have acted a play on the sub- 
ject of Pyramus and Thisbe written especially 
forthem. Ty^^j were n't funny. No; they were 
perfectly lovely. What was so irresistibly 
comic, of course, was the difference between 
their performance and one's remembrance 
of regular performances of it — to say nothing 
of one's thoughts as to what Shakespeare 
would have said about it. How those children 
will laugh when they are grown up ! They 
will have something to laugh at that will last 
them a lifetime. But poor Shakespeare ! " 

I did not echo these final words of my 
friend. For does not Shakespeare rather par- 
ticularly like to bless us with the laugh that 
lasts a lifetime, even if — perhaps especially 
if — it be at our own expense? 

Books are such integral parts of the lives 
of present-day children, especially in Amer- 
ica. Their elders appreciate, as possibly the 
grown-ups of former times did not quite so 

143 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

fully appreciate, the importance of books in 
the education of the boys and girls. It may 
even be that we over-emphasize it a bit. We 
send the children to the book-shelves for help 
in work and for assistance in play. In effect, 
we say to them, "Read, that you may be 
able to mark, learn, and inwardly digest." It 
is only natural that the boys and girls should 
read for a hundred reasons, instead of for 
the one reason of an older day — the pur- 
suit of happiness in the mere reading itself. 
" How can you sit idly reading a book when 
there are so many useful things you might be 
doing ? " was the question often put to the 
children of yesterday by their elders. To-day 
we feel that the children can hardly do any- 
thing likely to prove more useful than read- 
ing a book. Is not this because we have 
taught them, not only to read, but to read 
for a diversity of reasons? 

American children are so familiarly at 
home in the world of books, it should not 
surprise us to find them occasionally taking 
rather a practical, everyday view of some of 
the things read. A little girl friend of mine 

144 



THE CHILD IN THE LIBRARY 

chanced to begin her reading of Shakespeare 
during a winter when her grown-up relatives 
were spending a large portion of their leisure 
going to see stage representations of Shake- 
speare's plays. She therefore heard consid- 
erable conversation about the plays, and 
about the persons acting the chief roles in 
them. It happened that "As You Like It" 
was one of the comedies being acted. The 
little girl was invited to go to see it. " Who 
is going to be Orlando ? " she inquired; she 
had listened to so much talk about who 
"was," or was "going to be," the various 
persons in the several dramas ! 

" But," she objected, when she was in- 
formed, " I think I Ve heard you say he is 
not very tall. Orlando was such a tall man ! " 

" Was he ? " I ventured, coming in at that 
moment. "I don't remember that about 
him. Who told you he was tall ? " 

" Why, it is in the book ! " she exclaimed. 

Every one present besought her to men- 
tion where. 

" Don't you remember ? " she said incred- 
ulously. " He says Rosalind is just as high 

145 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

as his heart ; that would n't be quite up 
to his shoulder. And she says she is more 
than common tall ! So he must have been 
* specially tall. Don't you remember ? " she 
asked again, looking perplexedly at our blank 
faces. 

There are so many bonds of understand- 
ing between American children of the pre- 
sent time and their grown-up relatives and 
friends. Is not one of the best of these that 
which has come out of our national impulse 
toward giving the boys and girls the books 
we love, " cut small " ; and showing them how 
to read those books as we read the larger 
books from which they are made ? " What 
kinds of books do American children read? " 
foreigners inquire. We are able to reply, 
" The same kinds that grown-up Americans 
read." "And why do they read them?" 
may be the next question. Again we can 
answer, " For much the same reasons that 
the grown-ups read them." "How do they 
use the libraries ? " might be the next query. 
Still we could say, " As grown people use 
them." And if yet another query, " Why ? " 

146 



THE CHILD IN THE LIBRARY 

be put, we might reply, " Because, unlike 
any other children in the world, American 
children are almost as completely ' exposed 
to books ' as are their elders." 



VI 

THE CHILD IN CHURCH 

Within the past few months, I have had 
the privilege of looking over the answers 
sent by men and women — most of them 
fathers and mothers — living in many sec- 
tions of the United States, in response to 
an examination paper containing among 
other questions this one : " Should church- 
going on the part of children be compul- 
sory or voluntary?" In almost every case 
the answer was, " It should be voluntary." 
In practically all instances the reason given 
was, "Worship, like love, is at its best only 
when it is a free-will offering." 

It was not a surprise to read again and 
again, in longer or in shorter form, such an 
answer, based upon such a reason. The re- 
ligious liberty of American children of the 
present day is perhaps the most salient fact 
of their lives. Without doubt, the giving to 
148 



THE CHILD IN CHURCH 

them of this liberty is the most remarkable 
fact in the lives of their elders. No grown 
people were ever at any time willingly al- 
lowed to exercise such freedom in matters 
pertaining to religion as are the children of 
our nation at the present time. Not only is 
churchgoing not compulsory ; religion itself 
is voluntary. 

A short while ago a little girl friend of 
mine was showing me her birthday gifts. 
Among them was a Bible. It was a beauti- 
ful book, bound in soft crimson leather, the 
child's name stamped on it in gold. 

"And who gave you this ?" I asked. 

"Father," the little girl replied. " See 
what he has written in it," she added, when 
the shining letters on the cover had been 
duly appreciated. 

I turned to the fly-leaf and read this : 

" To my daughter on her eighth birthday from 
her father. 

*" I give you the end of a golden string: 
Only wind it into a ball, — 
It will lead you in at Heaven's gate 
Biiilt in Jerusalem's wall.' " 

149 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

" Is n't it lovely ? " questioned the child, 
who had stood by, waiting, while I read. 

" Yes," I agreed, " very lovely, and very 
new." 

Her mother, who was listening, smiled 
slowly. "My father gave me a Bible on 
my birthday, when I was seven" — she 
began. 

" O mother," interrupted her little girl, 
" what did grandfather write in it ? " 

" Go and look," her mother said. " You 
will find it on the table by my bed." 

The child eagerly ran out of the room. 
In a few moments she returned, the Bible 
of her mother's childhood in her hands. It 
also was a beautiful book; bound, too, in 
crimson leather, and with the name of its 
owner stamped on it in gold. And on the 
fly-leaf was written, — 

" To my daughter, on her seventh birth- 
day, from her father." 

Beneath this, however, was inscribed no 
modern poetry, but 

" Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy 
youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years 

150 




IN THE INFANT CLASS 



THE CHILD IN CHURCH 

draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure 
in them." 

The little girl read it aloud. " It sounds as 
though you would n't be happy if you didnt 
remember, mother," she said, dubiously. 

" Well, darling," her mother replied, " and 
so you would n't." 

The child took her own Bible and read 
aloud the verse her father had written. " But, 
mother, this sounds as though you wouldh^ 
happy if you did remember." 

" And so you will, dear," her mother made 
reply. " It is the same thing," she added. 

" Is it } " the little girl exclaimed in some 
surprise. " It does n't seem quite the same." 

The child did not press the question. She 
left us, to return her mother's Bible to its 
wonted place. When she came back, she re- 
sumed the exhibiting of her birthday gifts 
where it had been interrupted. But after she 
had gone out to play I said to her mother, 
"Are they quite the same — the text in your 
Bible and the lines in hers ? " 

"It is rather a long way from Solomon to 
William Blake, is n't it ? " she exclaimed. 
151 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

*' But I really don't see much difference. The 
same thing is said, only in the one case it is 
a command and in the other it is an impel- 
ling suggestion." 

" Is n't that rather a great deal of differ- 
ence ? " I ventured. 

"No, I think not," she said, meditatively. 
"Of course, I admit," she supplemented, 
"that the idea of an impelling suggestion ap- 
peals to the imagination more than the idea 
of a command. But that 's the only differ- 
ence." 

It seems to me that this " only " difference 
is at the very foundation of the religious 
training of the children of the present day in 
our country. We do our best to awaken 
their imaginations, to put to them suggestions 
that will impel, to say to them the " same 
thing " that was said to the children of more 
austere times about remembering their Cre- 
ator ; but so to say it that they feel, not that 
they will be unhappy if they do not remem- 
ber, but that they will be happy if they do. 
It is the love of God rather than the fear of 
God that we would have them know. 
152 



THE CHILD IN CHURCH 

Is it not, indeed, just because we do so 
earnestly desire that they should learn this 
that we leave them so free with regard to 
what we call their spiritual life? "Read a 
chapter in your Bible every day, darling," I 
recently heard a mother say to her little girl 
on the eve of her first visit away from home 
without her parents. " In Auntie's house 
they don't have family prayers, as we do, so 
you won't hear a chapter read every day as 
you do at home." 

"What chapters shall I read, mamma.?" 
the child asked. 

" Any you choose, dear," the mother re- 
plied. 

" And when in the day ? " was the next 
question. " Morning or night ? " 

" Just as you hke, dearest," the mother 
answered. 

But there is a religious liberty beyond 
this. To no one in America is it so readily, 
so sympathetically, given as to a child. We 
are all familiar with the difficulties which 
attend a grown person, even in America, 
whose convictions necessitate a change of 

153 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

religious denomination. Such a situation 
almost invariably means distress to the fam- 
ily, and to the relinquished church of the 
person the form of whose faith has altered. 
In few other matters is so small a measure 
of liberty understandingly granted a grown 
person, even in America. But when a child 
would turn from one form of belief to 
another, how differently the circumstance is 
regarded ! 

One Sunday, not long ago, visiting an 
Episcopal Sunday-school, I saw in one of 
the primary classes a little girl whose pa- 
rents, as I was aware, were members of the 
Baptist Church. 

" Is she a guest ? " I asked her teacher. 

" Oh, no," she replied ; " she is a regular 
member of the Sunday-school ; she comes 
every Sunday. She was christened at Easter ; 
I am her godmother." 

" But don't her father and mother belong 
to the Baptist Church ? " I questioned. 

" Yes," said the child's Sunday-school 
teacher. " But she came to church one Sun- 
day with some new playmates of hers, whose 

154 



THE CHILD IN CHURCH 

parents are Episcopalians, to see a baby 
christened. Then her little friends told her 
how they had all been christened, as babies ; 
and when she found that she had n*t been, 
she wanted to be. So her father and mother 
let her, and she comes to Sunday-school 
here." 

" Where does she go to church ? " I found 
myself inquiring. 

" To the Baptist Church, with her father 
and mother," was the reply. " She asked 
them to let her come to Sunday-school here; 
but it never occurred to her to think of going 
to church excepting with them." 

Somewhat later I chanced to meet the 
child's mother. It was not long before she 
spoke to me concerning her little girl's 
membership in the Episcopal Sunday-school. 
" What were her father and I to do ? " the 
mother said. " We did n't feel justified in 
standing in her way. She wanted to be chris- 
tened ; it seemed to mean something real to 
her — " she broke off. "What were we to 
do?" she repeated. "It would be a dread- 
ful thing to check a child's aspiration toward 

155 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

God! Of course she is only a little girl, and 
she wanted to be like the others. Her father 
and I thought of that, naturally. But — '* 
Again she stopped. " One can never tell,'* 
she went on, "what is in the mind of a 
child, nor what may be happening to its 
spirit. Samuel was a very little child when 
God spoke to him," she concluded, simply. 

Quite as far as that mother, has another 
mother of my acquaintance let her little girl 
go along the way of religious freedom. One 
day I went with her and the child to an Ital- 
ian jewelry shop. Among the things there 
was a rosary of coral and silver. The little 
girl, attracted by its glitter and color, seized 
it and slipped it over her head. "Look, 
mother," she said, " see this lovely necklace ! " 

Her mother gently took it from her. " It 
is n't a necklace," she explained ; " it is called 
a rosary. You must n't play with it; because 
it is something some people use to say their 
prayers with." 

The child's mother is of Scotch birth and 
New England upbringing. The little girl has 
been accustomed to a form of religion and to 
156 



THE CHILD IN CHURCH 

an attitude toward the things of rehgion that 
are beautiful, but austerely beautiful. She is 
an imaginative child ; and she caught eagerly 
at the poetical element thus, for the first 
time, associated with prayer. "Tell me how!'* 
she begged. 

When next I was in the little girl's bed- 
room, I saw the coral and silver rosary hang- 
ing on one of the head-posts of her bed. 
"Yes, my dear," her mother explained to me, 
" I got the rosary for her. She wanted it — 
' to say my prayers with,' she said ; so I got it. 
After all, the important thing is that she says 
her prayers." 

Among my treasures I have a rosary, 
brought to me from the Holy Land. I have 
had it for a long time, and it has hung on 
the frame of a photograph of Bellini's lovely 
Madonna. This little girl has always liked 
that picture, and she has often spoken to me 
about it. But she had never mentioned the 
rosary, which not only is made of dark wood, 
but is darker still with its centuries of age. 
One day after the rosary of pink coral and 
bright silver had been given her she came to 

157 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

see me. Passing through the room where the 
Madonna is, she stopped to look at it. At 
once she exclaimed, ^^Tou have a rosary ! " 

"Yes," I said; "it came from the Holy 
Land." I took it down, and put it into her 
hands. " It has been in Bethlehem," I went 
on, " and in Jerusalem. It is very old ; it 
belonged to a saint — like St. Francis, who 
was such friends with the birds, you remem- 
ber." 

"I suppose the saint used it to say his 
prayers with ? " the little girl observed. 
Then, the question evidently occurring to her 
for the first time, she asked, eagerly, " What 
prayers did he say, do you think? " 

When I had in some part replied, I said, 
this question indeed occurring to me for the 
first time, " What prayers do you say ? " 

"Oh,*' she repHed, instantly, " I say, ' Our 
Father,' and * Now I lay me,' and ' God bless * 
all the different ones at home, and in other 
places, that I know. I say all that; and it 
takes all the beads. So I say, * The Lord is 
my Shepherd' last, for the cross." She was 
silent for a moment, but I said nothing, 
158 



THE CHILD IN CHURCH 

and she went on. " I know * In my Father's 
house are many mansions/ and 'Though 
I speak with the tongues of men and an- 
gels/ I might say them sometimes instead, 
mightn't I ?" 

I told this to one of my friends who is a 
devout Roman Catholic. " It shows," she 
said, " what the rosary can do for religion ! " 

But it seemed to me that it showed rather 
what religion could do for the rosary. Had 
the child's mother, Scotch by birth. New Eng- 
land by breeding, not been a truly religious 
woman she would not have bade her little 
girl handle with reverence the emblem of a 
faith so unlike her own ; she would not have 
said, "Don't play with it." As for the small 
girl, had she never learned to " say prayers," 
she would not have desired the rosary to say 
them " with." And it was not the silver 
cross hanging on her rosary that influenced 
her to " say last," for it, the best psalm and 
"spiritual song" she knew; it was the un- 
derstanding she had been given by careful 
teaching of the meaning of that symbol. 
Above all, had the little girl, after being 
159 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

taught to pray, not been left free to pray as 
her childish heart indined, that rosary would 
scarcely have found a place on the head-post 
of her small bed. 

It may be for the very reason that the 
children are not compelled to think and to 
feel in the things of religion as their parents 
do that fathers and mothers in America so 
frankly tell their boys and girls exactly what 
they do think and just how they do feel. 
The children may not ever understand the 
religious experiences through which their 
parents are passing, but they often know 
what those experiences are. Moreover, they 
sometimes partake of them. 

Among my child friends there is a little 
girl, an only child, whose father died not a 
great while ago. The little girl had always 
had a share in the joys of her parents. It 
surprised no one who knew the family that 
the mother in her grief turned to the child 
for comfort ; and that together they bore their 
great bereavement. Indeed, so completely 
did this occur that the little girl for a time 
hardly saw any one excepting her mother and 
1 60 



THE CHILD IN CHURCH 

her governess. After a suitable interval, an 
old friend of the family approached the 
mother on the subject. " Your little girl is 
only eight years old,'* she said, gently. 
" Ought n't she perhaps to go to see her 
playmates, and have them come to see her, 
again, now ? " 

The mother saw the wisdom of the sug- 
gestion. The child continued to spend much 
of her time with her mother, but she gradu- 
ally resumed her former childish occupa- 
tions. She had always been a gregarious lit- 
tle girl ; once more her nursery was a merry, 
even an hilarious, place. 

One Saturday a short time ago she was 
among the six small guests invited to the 
birthday luncheon of another little girl friend 
of mine. Along with several other grown- 
ups I had been invited to come and lend a 
hand at this festivity. I arrived just as the 
children were going into the dining-room, 
where the table set forth for their especial 
use, and bright with the light of the seven 
candles on the cake, safely placed in the 
centre, awaited them. They climbed into 
i6i 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

their chairs, and then all seven of them 
paused. " Mother," said the little girl of the 
house, " who shall say grace ? " 

"/can!" 

" Let me I " 

" I always do at home ! " 

These and other exclamations were made 
before the mother could reply. When she 
was able to get a hearing, she suggested, " I 
think each one of you might, since you all 
can and would like to." 

"You say it first," said one of the child- 
ren to her little hostess, " because it is your 
birthday." 

At a nod from her mother, the little girl 
said the Selkirk grace : — 

*« Some hae meat and canna eat. 

And some wad eat that want it j 
But we hae meat and we can eat. 
And sac the Lord be than kit.'* 

Then another small girl said her grace, 
which was Herrick's : — 

** Here a little child I stand. 
Heaving up my either hand ; 

162 



THE CHILD IN CHURCH 

Cold as paddocks though they be. 
Here I lift them up to Thee, 
For a benison to fall 
On our meat and on us all 
Amen." 

The next little girl said Stevenson's : — 

<* It is very nice to think 
The world is full of meat and drink, 
And little children saying grace 
In every Christian kind of place.** 

The succeeding little guests said the dear 
and familiar "blessing" of so many child- 
ren : — 

*<For what we are about to receive, O Lord, make us 

truly thankful." 

My little friend into whose life so griev- 
ous a sorrow had come was the last to say 
her grace. It was the poem of Miss Jose- 
phine Preston Peabody entitled " Before 
Meat : — 

** Hunger of the world. 
When we ask a grace 
Be remembered here with us. 
By the vacant place. 

«* Thirst with nought to drink. 
Sorrow more than mine, 

163 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

May God some day make you laugh. 
With water turned to wine ! " 

There was a silence when she finished, 
among the children as well as among the 
grown persons present. " I don*t quite under- 
stand what your grace means," the little girl 
of the house said at last to her small guest. 

" It means that I still have my mamma, 
and she still has me," replied the child. 
"Some people have n't anybody. It means 
that; and it means we ask God to let them 
have Him. My mamma told me, when she 
taught it to me to say instead of the grace I 
used to say when we had my papa." 

The little girl explained with the simple 
seriousness and sweetness so characteristic 
of the answers children make to questions 
asked them regarding things in any degree 
mystical. The other small girls listened as 
sweetly and as seriously. Then, with one ac- 
cord, they returned to the gay delights of the 
occasion. They were a laughing, prattling, 
eagerly happy little party, and of them all 
not one was more blithe than the little girl 
who had said grace last. 
164 



THE CHILD IN CHURCH 

The child's intimate companionship with 
her mother in the sorrow which was her sor- 
row too had not taken from her the ability 
for participation in childish happiness, also 
hers by right. Was not this because the com- 
panionship was of so deep a nature? The 
mother, in letting her little girl share her 
grief, let her share too the knowledge of the 
source to which she looked for consolation. 
Above all, she not only told her of heavier 
sorrows ; she told her how those greater 
griefs might be lightened. Children in Amer- 
ica enter into so many of the things of their 
parents* lives, is it not good that they are 
given their parts even in those spiritual things 
that are most near and sacred ? 

I have among my friends a little boy whose 
father finds God most surely in the operation 
of natural law. Indeed, he has often both 
shocked and distressed certain of his neigh- 
bors by declaring it to be his belief that no- 
where else could God be found. " His poor 
wife ! " they were wont to exclaim ; " what 
must she think of such opinions ? " And 
later, when the little boy was born, " That 

165 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

unfortunate babyl" they sighed; "how will 
his mother teach him religion when his father 
has these strange ideas ? " That the wife 
seemed untroubled by the views of her hus- 
band, and that the baby, as he grew into 
little-boyhood, appeared very similar to other 
children as far as prayers and Bible stories and 
even attendance at church were concerned, 
did not reassure the disturbed neighbors. 
For the child's father continued to ex- 
press — if possible, more decidedly — his dis- 
quieting convictions. " Evidently, though," 
said one neighbor, " he does n*t put such 
thoughts into the head of his child." 

Apparently he did not. I knew the small 
boy rather intimately, and I was aware that 
his father, after the custom of most Ameri- 
can parents, took the child into his confi- 
dence with regard to many other matters. 
The little boy was well acquainted with his fa- 
ther's political belief, for example. I had had 
early evidence of this. But it was not until 
a much later time, and then indirectly, that 
I saw that the little boy was possessed too of 
a knowledge of his father's religious faith. 
i66 



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DO YOU LIKE MY NEW HYMN r 



THE CHILD IN CHURCH 

I was ill in a hospital a year or two ago, 
and the little boy came with his mother to 
see me. A clergyman happened to call at the 
same time. It was Sunday, and the clergy- 
man suggested to my small friend that he 
say a psalm or a hymn for me. 

" My new one, that daddy has just taught 
me ? " the child inquired, turning to his 
mother. 

She smiled at him. "Yes, dearest," she 
said gently. 

The little boy came and stood beside my 
bed, and, in a voice that betokened a love 
and understanding of every line, repeated 
Mrs. Browning's lovely poem : — 

*' They say that God lives very high! 
But if you look above the pines. 
You cannot see our God. And why ? 

** And if you dig down in the mines. 
You never sec Him in the gold. 
Though from Him all that 's glory shines. 

** God is so good. He wears a fold 

Of heaven and earth across His face — 
.Like secrets kept, for love, untold. 

167 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

" But still I feel that His embrace 

Slides down, by thrills, through all things made. 
Through sight and sound of every place : 

** As if my tender mother laid 

On my shut Hds, her kisses* pressure. 
Half-waking me at night ; and said, 

' Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser ? ' *' 

Beyond question the clergyman had ex- 
pected a less unusual selection than this ; but 
he smiled very kindly at the httle boy as he 
said the beautiful words. At the conclusion 
he merely said, " You have a good father, 
my boy.** 

" Do you like my new hymn ? '* the child 
asked me. 

"Yes," I replied. "Did your father tell you 
what it means?" I added, suddenly curious. 

"No,** said my small friend; "I didn*t 
ask him. "You see,** he supplemented, "it 
tells itself what it means ! ** 

The things of religion so often to the 
children tell themselves what they mean ! 
Only the other day I heard a little girl re- 
counting to her young uncle, learned in the 
higher criticism, the story of the Creation. 
i68 



THE CHILD IN CHURCH 

" Just only six days it took God to make 
everything" she said; "think of that!" 

" My dear child," remonstrated her uncle, 
" tbat is n't the point at all — the amount of 
time it required ! As a matter of fact, it took 
thousands of years to make the world. The 
word ' day ' in that connection means a cer- 
tain period of time, not twenty-four hours." 

" Oh ! " cried the little girl, in disappoint- 
ment ; " that takes the wonderfulness out of 
it!" 

" Not at all," protested her young uncle. 
"And, supposing it did, can you not see that 
the world could not have been made in six 
o^ our days?" 

" Why," said the child, in surprise, " I 
should think it could have been ! " 

" For what reason? " her uncle asked, in 
equal amazement. 

" Because God was doing it ! " the child 
exclaimed. 

Her uncle did not at once reply. When 
he did, it was to say, " You are right about 
that, my dear." 

Sometimes it happens that a child finds in 
169 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

our careful explanation of the meaning of a 
religious belief or practice a different or a 
further significance than we have indicated. 
I once had an especially striking experience 
of this kind. 

I was visiting a family in which there were 
several children, cared for by a nurse of the 
old-fashioned, old-world type. She was a 
woman well beyond middle age, and of a 
frank and simple piety. There was hardly 
a circumstance of daily life for which she 
was not ready with an accustomed ejacula- 
tory prayer or thanksgiving. One day I 
chanced to speak to her of a mutual friend, 
long dead. " God rest her soul ! " said the 
old nurse, in a low tone. 

" Why did she say that ? " the little four- 
year-old girl of the house asked me. " I 
never heard her say that before ! " 

" It is a prayer that some persons always 
say when speaking of any one who is dead ; 
especially any one they knew and loved," I 
explained. 

Later in the day, turning over a portfolio 
of photographs with the little girl, I took 
170 



THE CHILD IN CHURCH 

up a picture of a fine, faithful-eyed dog. 
"Whose dog is this?" I asked. "What a 
good one he is! " 

" He was ours," replied the child, " and 
he was very good ; we liked him. But he is 
dead now — " She paused as if struck by a 
sudden remembrance. Then, " God rest his 
soul ! " she sighed, softly. 

Most of the answers I read in response 
to the question, " Should churchgoing on 
the part of children be compulsory or vol- 
untary?"did not end with the brief state- 
ment that it should be voluntary, and the 
reason why ; a considerable number of them 
went on to say: "The children should of 
course be inspired and encouraged to go. 
They should be taught that it is a privilege. 
Their Sunday-school teachers and their min- 
ister, as well as their parents, can help to 
make them wish to go." 

Certainly their Sunday-school teachers 
and ministers can, and do. The answers I 
have quoted took for granted the attendance 
of children at Sunday-school. Not one of 
them suggested that this was a matter ad- 
171 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

mitting of free choice on the part of the 
children. " But it is n't," declared an experi- 
enced Sunday-school teacher who is a friend 
of mine when I said this to her. " Going to 
Sunday-school is n't worship ; it is learning 
whom to worship and how. Naturally, child- 
ren go, just as they go to week-day school, 
whether they like to or not; I must grant," 
she added by way of amendment, " that they 
usually do like to go ! " 

Our Sunday-schools have become more 
and more like our week-day schools. The 
boys and girls are taught in them whom to 
worship and how, but they are taught very 
much after the manner that, in the week-day 
schools, they are instructed concerning secu- 
lar things. That custom, belonging to a 
time not so far in the past but that many of 
us remember it, of consigning the " infant 
class " of the Sunday-school to any amiable 
young girl in the parish who could promise 
to be reasonably regular in meeting it does 
not obtain at the present day. Sunday-school 
teachers are trained, and trained with increas- 
ing care and thoroughness, for their task. 
172 




CHILDREN GO TO CHURCH 



THE CHILD IN CHURCH 

Readiness to teach is no longer a sufficient 
credential. The amiable young girl must 
now not only be willing to teach, she must 
also be willing to learn how to teach. In the 
earlier time practically any well-disposed 
young man of the congregation who would 
consent to take charge of a class of boys was 
eagerly allotted that class without further 
parley. This, too, is not now the case. The 
young man, before beginning to teach the 
boys, is obliged to prepare himself somewhat 
specifically for such work. In my own parish 
the boys' classes of the Sunday-school are 
taught by young men who are students in 
the Theological School of which my parish 
church is the chapel. In an adjacent parish 
the " infant class " is in charge of an accom- 
plished kindergartner. Surely such persons 
are well qualified to help to inspire and to 
encourage the children to regard churchgoing 
as a privilege, and to make them wish to go ! 
And the minister ! I am inclined to think 
that the minister helps more than any one 
else, except the father and mother, to give 
the children this inspiration, this encourage- 

173 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

ment. Children go to church now, when 
churchgoing is voluntary, quite as much as 
they went when it was compulsory. They 
learn very early to wish to go ; they see with 
small difficulty that it is a privilege. Their 
Sunday-school teachers might help them, 
even their parents might help them, but, un- 
less the minister helped them, would this be 
so ? 

There are so many ways in which the 
minister does his part in this matter of the 
child's relation to the church, and to those 
things for which the church stands. They 
are happily familiar to us through our child 
friends : the " children's service " at Christ- 
mas and at Easter; the "talks to children" 
on certain Sundays of the year. These are 
some of them. And there are other, more 
individual, more intimate ways. 

The other day a little girl who is a friend 
of mine asked me to make out a list of books 
likely to be found in the "children's room" 
of the near-by public library that I thought 
she would enjoy reading. On the list I put 
"The Little Lame Prince," the charming 

^74 



THE CHILD IN CHURCH 

story by Dinah Mulock. Having completed 
the list, I read it aloud to the little girl. 
When I reached Miss Mulock's book, she 
interrupted me. 

" 'The Little Lame Prince,* did you say? 
Is that in the library ? I thought it was in 
the Bible.** 

"The Bible!** I exclaimed. 

" Yes,** the child said, in some surprise ; 
"don*t you remember? He was Jonathan's 
little boy — Jonathan, that was David*s 
friend — David, that killed the giant, you 
know.'* 

I at once investigated. The little girl was 
quite correct. "Who told you about him?** 
I inquired. 

"Our minister,** she replied. "He read 
it to me and some of the other children." 

This, too, a bit later, I investigated. I 
found that the minister had not read the 
story as it is written in the Bible, but a 
version of it written by himself especially 
for this purpose and entitled " The Little 
Lame Prince.** 

At church, as elsewhere, the children of 

175 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

our nation are quick to observe, and to make 
their own, opportunities for doing as the 
grown-ups do. When occasion arises, they 
slip with cheerful and confiding ease into the 
places of their elders. 

One Sunday, last summer, I chanced to 
attend a church in a little seaside village. 
When the moment arrived for taking up the 
collection, no one went forward to attend to 
that duty. I was told afterward that the man 
who always did it was most unprecedentedly 
absent. There were a number of other men 
in the rather large congregation, but none 
of them stirred as the clergyman stood wait- 
ing after having read several offertory sen- 
tences. I understood afterward that they 
" felt bashful," not being used to taking up 
the collection. The clergyman hesitated for 
a moment, and then read another offertory 
sentence. As he finished, a little boy not 
more than nine years old stepped out of a 
back pew, where he was sitting with his 
mother, and, going up to the clergyman, held 
out his hand for the plate. The clergyman 
gravely gave it to him, and the child, with- 
176 



THE CHILD IN CHURCH 

out the slightest sign of shyness, went about 
the church collecting the offerings of the con- 
gregation. This being done, he, with equal un- 
self-consciousness, gave the plate again to 
the clergyman and returned to his seat beside 
his mother. 

" Did you tell him to do it ? " I inquired of 
the mother, later. 

" Oh, no," she answered ; " he asked me 
if he might. He said he knew how, he saw 
it done every Sunday, and he was sure the 
minister would let him." 

American children of the present day are 
surer than the children of any other nation 
have ever been that their fathers and their 
mothers and their ministers will allow them 
liberty to do in church, as well as with respect 
to going to church, such things as they know 
how to do, and eagerly wish to do. In our 
national love and reverence for childhood we 
willingly give the children the great gift that 
we give reluctantly, or not at all, to grown 
people — the liberty to worship God as they 
choose. 



CONCLUSION 

We are a child-loving nation ; and our 
love for the children is, for the most part, 
of the kind which Dr. Henry van Dyke de- 
scribes as " true love, the love that desires 
to bestow and to bless." The best things 
that we can obtain, we bestow upon the 
children ; with the goodliest blessings within 
our power, we bless them. This we do for 
them. And they, — is there not something 
that they do for us ? It seems to me that 
there is ; and that it is something incal- 
culably greater than anything we do, or could 
possibly do, for them. More than any other 
force in our national life, the children help 
us to work together toward a common end. 
A child can unite us into a mutually trust- 
ful, mutually cordial, mutually active group 
when no one else conceivably could. 

A few years ago, I was witness to a most 
striking example of this. I went to a "ladies* 

178 



CONCLUSION 

day" meeting of a large and important 
men's club that has for its object the study 
and the improvement of municipal condi- 
tions. The city of the club has a flourishing 
liquor trade. The club not infrequently 
gives over its meetings to discussions of the 
" liquor problem " ; — discussions which, I 
have been told, had, as a rule, resolved them- 
selves into mere argumentations as to license 
and no -license, resulting in nothing. By 
some accident this "ladies' day" meeting 
had for its chief speaker a man who is an ar- 
dent believer in and supporter of no-license. 
For an hour he spoke on this subject, and 
spoke exceedingly well. When he had fin- 
ished, there ensued that random play of ques- 
tion and answer that usually follows the 
presiding officer's, "We are now open to dis- 
cussion." The chief speaker had devoted the 
best efforts of his mature life to bringing about 
no-license in his home city; the subject was 
to him something more than a topic for a dis- 
cussion that should lead to no practical work 
in the direction of solving the "liquor pro- 
blem " in other cities. He tried to make that 
179 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

club meeting something more vital than an 
exchange of views on license and no-license. 
With the utmost earnestness, he attempted 
to arouse a living interest in the " problem," 
and, of course, to make converts to his own 
belief as to the most effective solution of it. 

Finally, some one said, " Is n't any liquor 
sold in your city ? Your law keeps it from 
being sold publicly, but privately, — how 
about that ? " 

" I cannot say," the chief speaker replied. 
" The law may occasionally be broken, — I 
suppose it is. But," he added, " I can tell 
you this, — we have no drunkards on our 
streets. I have a boy, — he is ten years old, 
and he has never seen a drunken man in 
his life. How about the boys of the people 
of this city, of this audience ? " 

The persons in that audience looked at 
the chief speaker ; they looked at each other. 
There followed such a serious, earnest, frank 
discussion of the " liquor problem " as had 
never before been held either in that club, 
or, indeed, in any assembly in that city. 
Since that day, that club has not only held 
i8o 



CONCLUSION 

debates on the " liquor problem " of its 
city ; it has tried to bring about no-license. 
The chief speaker of that meeting was far 
from being the first person who had ad- 
dressed the organization on that subject; 
neither was he the first to mention its rela- 
tion to childhood and youth ; but he was the 
very first to bring his own child, and to 
bring the children of each and every member 
of the association who had a child into his 
argument. With the help of the children, he 
prevailed. 

One of my friends who is a member of 
that club said to me recently, " It was the 
sincerity of the speaker of that 'ladies' day' 
meeting that won the audience. I really must 
protest against your thinking it was his 
chance reference to his boy ! " 

" But," I reminded him, " it was not un- 
til he made that ' chance reference ' to his 
boy that any one was in the least moved. 
How do you explain that ? " 

" Oh," said my friend, " we were not sure 
until then that he was in dead earnest — " 

"And then you were ? " I queried. 
i8i 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

" Why, yes/' my friend replied. " A man 
does n't make use of his child to give weight 
to what he is advocating unless he really does 
believe it is just as good as he is arguing 
that it is." 

" So," I persisted, " it was^ after all, his 
'chance reference' to his boy — " 

" If you mean that nothing practical would 
have come of his speech, otherwise, — yes, 
it was ! " my friend allowed himself to admit. 

Another friend who happened to be pre- 
sent came into the conversation at this point. 
" Suppose he had had no child ! " she sug- 
gested. " Any number of perfectly sincere 
persons, who really believe that what they 
are advocating is just as good as they argue 
it is, have no children," she went on whim- 
sically; "what about them? Haven't they 
any chance of winning their audiences when 
they speak on no-license, — or what not?" 

Those of us who are in the habit of at- 
tending "welfare " meetings of one kind or 
another, from the occasional " hearings " 
before various committees of the legislature, 
to the periodic gatherings of the National 
182 



CONCLUSION 

Education Association, and the National 
Conference of Charities and Correction, 
know well that, when advocating solutions of 
social problems as grave as and even graver 
than the " liquor problem," the most potent 
plea employed by those speakers who are not 
fathers or mothers begins with the words, 
" You, who have children." My friend who 
had said that a man did not make use of his 
child to give weight to his arguments unless 
he had a genuine belief in that for which he 
was pleading might have gone further; he 
might have added that neither do men and 
women make such a use of other people's 
children excepting they be as completely sin- 
cere, — provided that those men and women 
love children. And we are a nation of child- 
lovers. 

It is because we love the children that 
they do for us so great a good thing. It is 
for the reason that we know them and that 
they know us that we love them. We know 
them so intimately ; and they know us so in- 
timately; and we and they are such familiar 
friends ! The grown people of other nations 

183 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

have sometimes, to quote the old phrase, 
" entered into the lives " of the children of 
the land ; we in America have gone further; 
— we have permitted the children of our 
nation to enter into our lives. Indeed, we 
have invited them ; and, once in, we have 
not deterred them from straying about as 
they would. The presence of the children in 
our lives, — so closely near, so intimately 
dear ! — unites us in grave and serious con- 
cerns, — unites us to great and significant 
endeavors ; and unites us even in smaller 
and lighter matters, — to a pleasant neigh- 
borliness one with another. However we 
may differ in other particulars, we are all 
alike in that we are tacitly pledged to the 
" cause " of children ; it is the desire of all 
of us that the world be made a more fit 
place for them. And, as we labor toward 
the fulfillment of this desire, they are our 
most effectual helpers. 

In our wider efforts after social better- 
ment, they help us. Because of them, we or- 
ganize ourselves into national, and state, and 
municipal associations for the furtherance of 
184 



CONCLUSION 

better living, — physical, mental, and moral. 
Through them, we test each other's sin- 
cerity, and measure each other's strength, as 
social servants. In our wider efforts this is 
true. Is it not the case also when the field of 
our endeavors is narrower ? 

Several years ago, I chanced to spend a 
week-end in a suburban town, the popula- 
tion of which is composed about equally of 
" old families," and of foreigners employed 
in the factory situated on the edge of the 
town. I was a guest in the home of a min- 
ister of the place. Both he and his wife be- 
lieved that the most important work a 
church could do in that community was 
" settlement " work. " Home-making classes 
for the girls," the minister's wife reiterated 
again and again ; and, " Classes in citizen- 
ship for the boys," her husband made fre- 
quent repetition, as we discussed the matter 
on the Saturday evening of my visit. 

" Why don't you have them ? " I inquired. 

" We have no place to have them in," the 
minister replied. " Our parish has no parish- 
house, and cannot afford to build one." 

185 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

" Then, why not use the church ? " I ven- 
tured. 

" If you knew the leading spirits in my 
congregation, you would not ask that ! " the 
minister exclaimed. 

" Have you suggested it to them ? " I 
asked. 

"Suggested!" the minister and his wife 
cried in chorus. ^^ Suggested I '^ 

"I have besought them, I have begged 
them, I have implored them ! " the min- 
ister continued. " It was no use. They are 
conservatives of the strictest type ; and they 
cannot bring themselves even to consider 
seriously a plan that would necessitate using 
the church for the meeting of a boys' politi- 
cal debating club, or a girls' class in market- 
ing." 

" Churches are so used, in these days ! " 
I remarked. 

"Yes," the minister agreed; "but not 
without the sympathy and cooperation of 
the leading members of the congregation ! " 

That suburban town is not one to which 
I am a frequent visitor. More than a year 
i86 



CONCLUSION 

passed before I found myself again In the 
pleasant home of the minister. " I must go 
to my Three-Meals-a-Day Club," my host- 
ess said shortly after my arrival on Satur- 
day afternoon. " Would n't you like to go 
with me ? " 

" What is it, and where does it meet ? " I 
asked. 

" It is a girls* housekeeping class," an- 
swered the minister's wife ; " and it meets 
in the church." 

" The church ? '* I exclaimed. " So the 
'leading spirits' have agreed to having it 
used for ' settlement ' work ! How did you 
win them over ? " 

" We did n't," she replied ; " they won 
themselves over, — or rather the little child- 
ren of one of them did it." 

When I urged her to tell me how, she 
said, " We are invited to that ' leading 
spirit's ' house to dinner to-morrow ; and you 
can find out for yourself, then." 

It proved to be an easy thing to discover. 
" I am glad to see that, since you have no 
parish-house, you are using your church for 

187 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

parish-house activities," I made an early oc- 
casion to say to our hostess, after dinner, on 
the Sunday. "You were not using it in that 
way when I was here last ; it is something 
very new, is n't it ? " 

" It is, my dear," said our hostess, — one 
of those of his flock whom the minister had 
described as " conservatives of the strictest 
type "; " * very new * are the exact words with 
which to speak of it ! " 

" How did it happen ? " I asked. 

She smiled. " Our minister and his wife 
declare that my small son and daughter are 
mainly responsible for it ! " she said. "They 
began to attend the public school this au- 
tumn, — they had, up to that time, been 
taught at home. You know what the popu- 
lation of this town is, — half foreign. Even 
in the school in this district, there are a con- 
siderable number of foreigners. I don't 
know why it is, when they have so many 
playmates in their own set, that my children 
should have made friends, and such close 
friends, with some of those foreign chil- 
dren ! But they did. And not content with 
i88 



CONCLUSION 

bringing them here, they wanted to go to 
their homes ! Of course, I could n't allow 
that. I explained to my boy and girl as well 
as I was able ; I told them those people did 
not know how to live properly; that they 
might keep their children clean, because 
they would n't be permitted to send them to 
school unless they did ; but their houses 
were dirty, and their food bad. And what do 
you think my children said to me ? They 
said, * Mother, have they got to have their 
houses dirty ? Have they got to have bad 
food ? Could n't they have things nice, as we 
have ? ' It quite startled me to hear my own 
children ask me such things ; it made me 
think. I told my husband about it ; it made 
him think, too. You know, we are always 
hearing that, if we are going to try to im- 
prove the living conditions of the poor, we 
must ^ begin with the children,' — begin by 
teaching them better ways of living. Our 
minister and his wife have all along been 
eager to teach these foreign children. We 
have no place to teach them in, except our 
church. It was rather a wrench for my hus- 
189 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 

band and me, — giving our approval to using 
a church for a club-house. But we did it. 
And we secured the consent of the rest of the 
congregation, — we told them what our chil- 
dren had said. We were not the only ones 
who thought the children had, to use an old- 
fashioned theological term, ' been directed ' 
in what they had said ! " she concluded. 

The children had said nothing that the 
minister had not said. Was it not less what 
they had said than the fact of their saying it 
that changed the whole course of feeling and 
action in that parish ? 

On the days when it is our lot to share 
in doing large tasks, the children help us. 
What of the days which bring with them 
only a " petty round of irritating concerns 
and duties ? '* Do they not help us then, too ? 

In a house on my square, there lives a 
little girl, three years old, who, every morn- 
ing at about eight o'clock, when the front 
doors of the square open, and the workers 
come hurrying down their steps, appears at 
her nursery window, — open except in very 
stormy weather. " Good-bye ! '* she calls to 
190 



CONCLUSION 

each one, smiling, and waving her small 
hand, "good-bye !" 

" Good-bye ! " we all call back, " good- 
bye!" We smile, too, and wave a hand to 
the little girl. Then, almost invariably, we 
glance at each other, and smile again, to- 
gether. Thus our day begins. 

We are familiar with the thought of our 
devotion to children. As individuals, and as 
a nation, our services to the children of our 
land are conspicuously great. " You do so 
much for children, in America ! " It is no 
new thing to us to hear this exclamation. 
We have heard, we hear it so often ! All of 
us know that it is true. We are coming to 
see that the converse is equally true ; that 
the children do much for us, do more than we 
do for them ; do the best thing in the world, 
— make us who are so many, one ; keep us, 
who are so diverse, united ; help us, whether 
our tasks be great or small, to " go to our 
labor, smiling." 

THE END 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



^ 1913 



